4/21: Doll Flats to Mountain Harbor

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• Miles 392.3-395.3 (3.1 mi)
• Total ascent: 597′; descent 2280′

Nothing could taste better than the simple burger and fries, from the on-site food truck that serves nothing else, that we just ate.

Our room at Mountain Harbor is an 80-square-foot job, with a low-slung king bed somehow squeezed through the sliding barn door. Mountain Harbor itself is a converted barn, complete with two identical brother-and-sister kitties evidently born here before it became a hiker hostel. The kitties cuddled all day to stay warm, leaving their shared bed only to beg for our burgers.

We turned them down, with difficulty, and ate on our bed. How nice it is to not worry for once about making smells where we sleep. 

Tomorrow’s breakfast, which, as as testament to its popularity, we prepaid for, is supposed to be among the best on the trail. We hear it’s a five-course meal.

We share our hostel tonight, and hopefully breakfast tomorrow, with Maki — a New York City actor who turns 30 tomorrow — as well as two older gentlemen and two middle-aged women. The four we don’t know well are all veterans, so the room’s conversation revolved around military experiences. Maki slept, while we planned our next resupply and sheltered stay. 

Our next hostel is Boots Off, in Hampton, TN, and owned by a trail angel we met in Georgia. We’re trying a 2.5-day resupply cycle, which is shorter than we prefer but means our bear cans are wonderfully light. We hear the hike is easier than the Roan Highlands, which we just crossed and recommend to any hiker with a good wind jacket. 

Again, however, we seem to have timed it right: Cold weather will follow us out of Mountain Harbor, but we ought to be at Boots Off for the wettest of the cold days.

After Boots Off, we’ll be barely two days from Damascus, VA, self-titled Trail Town USA, where we hope to do our first “zero” since Franklin, NC. 

We aren’t sure yet whether we’ll shuttle back to Damascus for Trail Days, the biggest and only official festival on the AT, or not. Transportation costs alone would likely run into the hundreds, and Rachel and I have been to festivals before. We would love, however, to reunite with all the hikers we met along the way and continue to wonder about. 

We hope they, and our friends and family back home, miss us as much as we do them. We continue to reassure ourselves that everything is working out for us just as it should. 

Given the luck we’ve had and beauty we’ve seen, and given how full on hot food we are, it is hard to feel otherwise.