Miles: 17.4 Steps: 42,523 Elevation Gain: 3,961 feet Wow, what a day! I love it I love it I love it! Hung out lazily until 9 or so chatting everyone up. My tent-platform-mates chuckleberry Finn and Slippy were great and I even got to witness Slippy being given his trail name, Sweet! So fun hanging out and socializing! Next up: the trail! Through the woods and over the mountains! The thing about the AT: it LOVES high points! Summit this, summit that, summit all those too. Annnnnnd: repeat until Maine! Two road crossings in a row had Trail magic! What? Is this real? YUP! First group gave me an apple and a sausage and cheese English muffin! And weighed my pack: 44 pounds! Thank you! Next, Obi One gave me a hot cocoa at the next road crossing. Great guy, big hiker. Thank you so much! Next was a bit of a slog to the top of Blood Mountain. Felt a bit dehydrated and hungry so I stopped, took a long break and ate and drank (who’ had thought?) Hiked for a while with Chad: great guy, we really hit it off. He’s from Mass, had a bunch of interesting jobs, trained for a year for this hike, etc. He thinks it’s pretty funny how big my pack is compared to the quantity of miles I’ve hiked. Hope we get to hang out more! We finally made it to Neels Gap 20 minutes before the store closed. I bought most items on my list at the pricey store, cooked up a philly cheese stake in the microwave, chatted up the employees briefly and then they let us camp around back in a somewhat private place! Camped with Scar Badger and Savannah and Chad. Great group! I really like Scar Badger: smart, sarcastic, fun. Savannah is really cool herself, a wildfire fire fighter. She’s super nice and fun to talk to. We hung out, shared some stories, photos, played a couple riddle games, it was great! So fun to camp in such a small group and really get to like people! It’s 11:40pm and iim so awake! Maybe rain tomorrow...