Miles Hiked: 0
Miles Left: 1357.3
Ending Location: Mile 828.0, VA 56 road crossing, Quality Inn, Waynesboro VA

I had talked with Owl the other day about slack packing the next 30 miles of the trail. My problem was I didn’t want to skip any sections of the AT. While aqua blazing officially counts for the section it runs along, I still had to make it to the jump off location if I wanted to keep my through hike honest. Everyone was waiting in town for the water level in the river to go down, the recent rains had made it too dangerous, which gave me about two days to hike those 30 miles. 30 miles in two days while slack packing is totally doable … unless you are getting over being sick. Realizing that it would be nuts to hike today given how I was feeling I opted to take a zero day instead. This left me with a very difficult decision though. I had to choose if I wanted to skip a section or skip aqua blazing with my friends.

In the end I decided to give up on canoeing and hike the Shenandoahs instead. This wasn’t an easy decision and it was made harder when I went to Walmart with everyone and got to see how much fun they were having getting ready for their adventure. Still looking back on it, I totally made the right decision.

Not much more to say about today. I did laundry and grabbed a very salty burger at the Green Leaf, (I probably should have sent it back to the kitchen but I hate doing that). Mostly I just slept a lot which is what I rally needed.