I walked 37177 steps on the trail today.
I traveled about 15 miles today.
Today was full of UPs and downs, but not the normal trail kind. Vanilla Thunder's feet finally became too much pain so he has decided to leave the trail. Very sad. He's been fighting the pain since I joined him and I've been very impressed with what he's endured. We were going into a town to resupply anyway so, as we were sitting at the trailhead deciding how to proceed, a young lady we had meet two days earlier drove up. She is section hiking with her dad and have is a ride into town. In town, Buena Vista, at Lewis grocery, a good guy named Neil offered an idea - VT could skip ahead 5 days and rest while A-town and I hike to him. Hopefully, his feet will be better and he can continue when we catch him. And then, Neil drove us back to the trail and took VT 50 miles to his rest place. How friendly and helpful is that? So, here we are at a shelter with a Washington & Lee backpacking group, looking forward to a nice trail tomorrow and listening to dogs howling on a bear chase off in the distance. Notice their Hiking Dude stickers?