carter gap shelter

yet another day passes on the AT. got up early after a rough night - two of my shelter mates took it upon themselves to set mouse traps after the rest of us had gone to sleep. during the night they caught about 3 mice and had to wake the rest of us all each time. ugh. FYI - mice are around the shelters because hikers leave food, trash, etc. so it's understood that if you want to sleep in a shelter vs. a tent you just deal with it. the just scurry around after dark looking for food; don't really bother you much. oh well. I left camp before the others - at about 8 am. at 10 am I crossed the GA-NC state line. I'll try to insert a pic below. yippee, my first state is complete. nc has been so much more colorful. lots of green and yellow instead of mostly brown. so I hiked my 12.5 miles to get to standing indian shelter. I think I mentioned something about good weather in my previous post - big fat lie! it was cold windy foggy and rainy. and I would have had so many chances at great pictures. most of the day was easy hiking along a long ridge line, but I couldn't see anything except fir the vegetation on either side of the trail. so I'm sitting at the shelter when some people start to show up who were a ways behind me - people I'd rather not hang out with, oh yeah, I think I can leave at 4pm and hike another 7.6 miles to the next shelter before dark. I DID! wow. I broke the 20 mile mark; holy cow!! I'll be sore in the AM. I was almost running, but I made it just as the sun was going down. very stupid. I had to quicky boil water for coffee, so I could have something warm in my body and then hang my food from a tree by the light of my headlamp. then change clothes and get in my sleeping bag by 7 pm (dark already). blondie (adam) and long legs (brittish fellow) just showed up, so I won't be alone tonight. nice. saw several undated posts today about a local bear that has been stealing things and is not afraid of humans - great. jeez, those two guys have been trying to hang their food for about 20 minutes; I'll go help.
later,
L



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