Day 6: Snow can make you cry. 

8:42 pm

Total miles: 81

Yeah….

I am currently laying in my tent, curled up in my sleeping bag, and it is snowing. Fucking snowing… Like a couple inches on the ground and every so often I have to bang my tent to knock off the accumulating snow.

Let me back track some…

This morning we slept in at the hotel and had a continental breakfast. It was magical. I slept good, was feeling good, and honestly wanted to take a zero day. The weather called for snow and rain off and on and cold temperatures but didn’t make it seem like it was going to be anything drastic. Therefore, we didn’t really neeeeed to take a zero.

David was itching to get back on the trail and put some miles in. Which seemed doable and deep down I wanted to too. In the morning the weather looked fine, it was a light drizzle… We can handle that. So around 10:30 we headed back out.

To my surprise, Cotton had returned in the morning without us calling him and wanted to give us( and a couple others) a ride if we were planning to go back to the trail. So we never had to pay for a shuttle the whole time in town.

Cotton stole my heart. Such a kind soul who cared deeply for the trail and the people on it. I wish nothing but the absolute best for him.

So, on we went. Little snow, little rain, and cold temperatures that went away with layers and mountains to climb. I didn’t mind. David went on ahead and I hummed melodies.

We even reached an exciting… very exciting point… We crossed from Georgia to North Carolina!! I am officially in my second state of the AT!!

Things were good. Then… Its as if North Carolina became a whole different planet and the snow started coming down hard with strong winds at 40 mph. It was fun at first…but then I started getting cold.

Anyone who knows me knows… I love breakfast and I HATE being cold.

We arrived at a shelter after 11 miles at 430 and decided to stay thank the lord. My feet were freezing. The shelter was jammed packed so we had to set up our tents with a few other people. I set it up as fast as I could then got inside and stripped out of my cold, wet clothes into my dry ones and into my sleeping bag.

I hated that I couldn’t get warm immediately and I started crying. A full blown bawl into my sleeping bag. I didn’t want to be sitting here freezing when we could of taken a zero day and been warm in the hotel, but that is what we decided to do.

Pissed and upset and to top it off I had to pee. I held it for about 3 hours until I felt a little warm and have been huddled in my sleeping bag since.

Tonight will suck and tomorrow will too with the mere fact of it being cold.

I thought starting in April would have let me pass all this, but I thought wrong.

At least I do have my sleeping bag and liner and layered clothes for now.

It could be worse… It can always be worse. The cry was needed and it helped me accept this situaton…

I don’t have service enough to post this, so will upload when can..

Freezing Iz and Oz