Appalachian Trail (day 21) - White Rocks Mountain to Vandeventer Shelter / mile 438

"I was in Europe during Cold War, ready to invade you." Chef Chuck

The day didn't really went according to plan but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

My main goal was to resupply at the town called Hampton 7 miles down the road. On the way there trail was passing the road where I was considering staying at the hostel last night. I've got stopped by a man driving back to Black Bear Resort asking if I want to come over for a breakfast, he mentioned that they got resupply as well but it was so early that I didn't clocked in what he said and just said no, thank you.

When he left I realized that I could just go there instead of Hampton and save myself few miles of walking (Hampton was further away from trail). I turned back and went to Black Bear Resort instead. I got welcomed by Chef Chuck and he served me best breakfast I had on trail so far. I couldn't decide if I wanted "grits" (type of processed corn grain) or hash browns so he gave me both, I went for "thru hikers breakfast" which had a lot of good protein. After that I did a small resupply just to get me going for the next two days until reaching next town stop in Damascus.

Rest of the day the trail was going around Watauga Lake and through quite impressive Watauga Dam. When I was around this area it started to rain and it didn't stop for several hours which made me reconsider where I wanted to stay for the night. I opted for a shelter, never stayed in one of the semi opened AT huts before, and it was a perfect time to try one. I've been joined here by three other hikers: Tallboy, Burger Man (who I've met yesterday) and Magpie.

We talked for few hours, Magpie was a lady in her seventies with a very dark sense of humour. She kept on telling us that she had a premonition of how exactly she would die on trail and how she would like to get buried (in a wooden coffin with worms thrown inside and a fungi blanket so she can decompose faster). She also said that her son shot his colleague in a foot once by accident, but he turned himself to a sherif straight away and no charges were pressed against him. A charming woman, she had an Instagram account run by her son with the pictures from the trail.

Tallboy was a girl in her early 20s interested in scrabble and crosswords, she played an online Scrabble game against Burger Man (we had mobile signal at the shelter). She also liked wildlife and night hiking and was the first person that saw black bears on the AT I knew. Burger Man's real name was Bill, he got his trail name before the trail when he cooked a trail magic of 50 burgers for a bunch of thru hikers, he was planning to finish the trail at a similar pace to mine, so I was expecting to see him more often.

We hanged our backpacks on the wires inside the shelter to protect it from mice and all agreed that we won't be doing bear hangs for food and just keep it in the shelter. Soon enough the night fell, luckily no one else joined us, which was ideal as each of us had just enough space. It has stopped raining for the time being but the forecast for tomorrow was very wet.