Day 62

This morning we both woke up in a good mood – we were almost done with the park, the holiday weekend was over, and I was going to get a blackberry milkshake!  These milkshakes are talked about for hundreds of miles and I hadn’t had a chance to get one yet, this was my last chance!  About 4 miles in to our day we’d had easy terrain, but I needed some water so we stopped at a shelter to get some.  Here, some weekend hikers told me I wasn’t going to be able to get a milkshake!  They tried yesterday and they were out!  I was so bummed.  Being a thru hiker, we’re all pretty motivated by food and this pretty much ruined my day.  We continued on with a milder temperature day and easy terrain, reaching the Wayside at about 12:45.  I went in to ask about the shakes and sure enough they were out.  Happily, they did have one blackberry product – BLACKBERRY WINE!  Nokey and I happily bought the wine and headed out to the picinic table with our purchase.  Connect 4 showed up and we shared our wine with her.  Five hours later and four more bottles, we all felt great, but needed to hike on, ha! 

We all got moving and headed on to our last shelter in SNP – Gravel Springs.  On the way in with less than a half mile to go, it was again pouring rain.  We got to the shelter (with a bottle of wine we packed in) to find it was entirely full of section hikers.  Even though there was room in the shelter, they wouldn’t make room for us and we were all forced to set up our tents in the mud, dark, and pouring rain.  We again were so happy we’d be heading out of the park tomorrow and were ready to get away from the section hikers!