Appalachian Trail (day 27) - Quarter Way Inn to Jenkins Shelter / mile 581

"You are the first person I know that mentioned Articles of Confederation in a casual conversation" Anniversary

"We had two bear canisters but one of them rolled off the cliff on the second day of our hike" Historian

The day started with the best gourmet breakfast on the entire Appalachian Trail (according to Platinum-Blazing the Appalachian Trail guide) and it did live up to the expectations, there was apple and cinnamon cake, frittatas, hash skillet, blueberry buns, bacon, freshly baked sourdough, homemade apple sauce and blackberry jam and honey provided by the local bees. We sat down and had a history chat about.. windows. Historian was on fire with all the facts and dates, we asked Kate how old was the sycamore tree and she told us that it was planted in 1790, so 235 years ago! We've also been joined by Late Start, a blogger who arrived so late yesterday that I've only noticed him sleeping in one of the bunk beds in the morning.

I've had a second round of the breakfast, and paid for my stay at the Inn, the total bill came up to 65$. Kate took my picture by the tree which would end up somewhere on social networks and I left for the trail.

Hike started with a long but steady climb to Chestnut Knob Shelter, I've arrived there at about 1 PM, where I just missed Rhino. His friend Side Tracked told me that he will be going another 10 miles to the Jenkins Shelter, the stage was set, I was going there as well then. Luckily rest of the path wasn't too bad. I have almost stepped on two snakes along the way (they like to sunbath on trail during hot days), one was black another pale green, I've only managed to snap the picture of the second one. I'll post here a picture of a different snake I've seen on the trail few weeks ago (I believe it was a rat snake):

I've arrived at the campsite at 6 PM, and it was already really busy, shelter was almost full and the better tent spots were taken. Good thing about the MSR Hubba tent I was using was that the footprint was so small that I could set it up in places most other tents would not fit in, so I managed to find a good spot not far from the shelter.

I've ate the dinner and had a chat with Rhino, who told me he was 53! He honestly looked younger than me, he's wife and 20 year old son visited him on trail regularly, but since they were living in North Carolina the distances were slowly getting longer, so Rhino was wondering if they will be able to come that often as the trail continued.

Campsite was all chatty until about 8:30 PM, people were exited about a burger restaurant 11.3 miles ahead on the trail. Then conversations slowly faded and we hit our hiker midnight at 9 PM