Appalachian Trail (day 3) - Blood Mountain Shelter to Blue Mountain Shelter / mile 50

Dry day for a change, but last night might have just killed my (somewhat dying already) sleeping bag.

I woke up at 7:00 but I didn't start to pack as it was still dark and I didn't want to agitate Hun, the German shepherd sleeping next to me, he was also the reason I didn't move my sleeping bag at night knowing full well the water is dripping on it from the leaky roof. 

This might have been one of the worst nights I had on any trail so far, it was all things combined - the heavy rain, wind howling through the empty window frames, roof leaking wherever the wind was pushing the rain through it, the massive, confused dog, his way under prepared, sleeping under tarpaulin on a concrete floor owner and obviously the whole build up of an extremely rainy and miserable day.

Once it got bright at around 8am, I slowly started to pack up my things, Hun immediately came over and was inspecting my every move, I decided to give him a packet of tuna to show that I'm a friendly fellow, his owner could not care less. My sleeping bag was drenched, all the clothes I hung up to dry were even wetter than when I hanged them last night. It was still raining.

There's no quite the feeling similar to putting your wet, cold clothes in the morning, it wakes you up immediately, after a couple of minutes they warm up through your body heat and you can pretend they are all fine - then as you hike throughout the day (granted it's not raining) they gradually dry on you and presto! You have a nice dry set of clothes again.

It finally stopped raining at around 10am, rest of the day was cloudy without the slightest chance of meatballs. At around this time I arrived at Neel's Gap Mountain Crossing Store, I've bought few tuna packets and Clif bars, I've also picked up some items from the hiker box including a dehydrated spaghetti Bolognese which I had later on for a dinner, few mini tortillas, peanut butter and a posh version of trail mix. 

Day was slow going and I definitely felt lack of energy from last day and night. I've arrived at the campsite before 6pm and had a dinner with bunch of jolly AT hikers, telling all the goofy stories about their trail names. One guy was called "Treadmill" he got this name because on couple occasions he would take the wrong turn while hiking and had to backtrack to the trail making his daily total milage 0, hence his "treadmilling".

After the dinner was over I returned to my tent and noticed straight away that my once cozy and warm sleeping bag (which I also tried to dry, carrying it on my backpack the whole day) looked like a sausage skin. I had to put on my puffy as a temporary solution to keep warm, but I couldn't carry on hiking with unreliable sleeping bag so the trip to the outfitters was inevitable.