Day 41

We decided to go all the way to Chuck's.

The first thing we did in the morning was go up 1000 feet in a mile. Thankfully, before I was really awake, we started to level out and 3.8 miles into our day, we summited chestnut knob. 

For the next 8 miles, we walked a section known as burgers garden. Here, you ridge walked and overlooked the valley known as burkes garden. The trail was fairly rocky, but the ascent and descent over the 8 miles wasn't anything more than 1,500 up and down. 

Once we finished this section, we dropped up and down two different mountains / valleys until we hit a trail crossing known as "unmarked trail." Up until this point, we had done roughly 18 miles on the day. Seeing that it was only 330, we made the decision that we would push another 8 miles to Chuck's house. 

For those of you who don't know, chuck was a guy who in 2020, randomly drove by us at a road crossing and invited us to spend the night at his house and have a cookout. Now, 4 years later, we're back and doing the same thing all over again. 

After completing the final 8 relatively easy miles, chuck picked us up from brushy mountain outpost, and we headed to his house. Before getting there, we swung by Arby's for a snack before bedtime, and I got a brisket burger, a Buffalo chicken sandwich, a large fry, and a vanilla milkshake. Let me tell you, it was all gone in less than 10 minutes. It was so good. 

Now we're just relaxing for tonight and tomorrow and enjoying being off our feet. 

Daily recap:

- Total miles: 25.8

- From: mile marker 566.3 to 592.1

- From a campsite before chestnut knob to Chuck's place in Bastian 

- high temp of 70

- low temp (morning) 60

- low temp (evening) 50 and rain

- total ascent: 5,440

- total descent: 5,846