I walked 46589 steps on the trail today.
I traveled about 23 miles today.
It was still warm when we woke this morning, not chilly as days past. We did our usual pop tarts and water and stayed walking down the gravel road. Less than a mile in, we saw two dogs beside the road. One was all black and the other was grey. They watched us walk toward them until one sauntered into the woods and the other scampered across to the other side of the road and into the trees. They made no noise and we saw nothing more of them except their tracks in the dust for another mile. So, they could have been feral dogs but they were not coyotes and I think they were big enough to have been wolves. Sorry, no pictures. The rest of the day was a long roadwalk on pavement to Northport. We did met a couple nice ladies riding bicycles and they chatted with us. Another woman stopped and offered us a ride to Northport saying everyone else was skipping this awful roadwalk. She sounded like a drug dealer trying to convince us - "come on, just try it". :-) And, we found and explored a tunnel chiseled into the hillside with a water pipe running out of it. Creepy! Especially the rodent we ran into. The road was very hot and smoky - surprise! And this one had No Trespassing signs everywhere. We had to slip past an abandoned house to get water from a small creek. 109 cars passed us so that added a little excitement throughout the day. Upon reaching Northport, a lady in a pickup said HI and asked if we were hiking the PNT. I asked if she knew if there was a place liked the city park where we might put up or tent. She directed is to see Sandy in Tony's Grocery. Tony's has a good selection for resupply and Sandy was very nice. She set us up with a tent spot, bathroom, and even WiFi for the evening. Our hiking day finished around 3:30 but once again we find ourselves moving faster than expected and getting to Republic a day early doesn't help us. Tomorrow looks like more road, but the forecast is for a drop of about 15 degrees!