Day 49

Weather:
Rain

Today's Hike:
Abington Gap Shelter to Damscus, VA - 10.2 miles

Muster and I woke up early this morning. It's a town day, and town days always have a way of nudging me out of me sleeping bag earlier then usual. It helped that it was about to rain and we wanted to pack up things and get going before we got dumped on. We were on the trail by 7:40am. After about 45 minutes of walking, Muster stops and begins to back up. I was behind her and from my perspective it looked as if she was looking at the ground, so I'm looking for a snake. To my surprise I see a bear cub (maybe about a year or two old) leap across the trail about 50 yards ahead of us.

"Holy crap! Thats a baby bear!" Muster exclaimed to me. "Yep -- where's mama?" I responded. We both stood and did a 360 of the area and didn't see anything. We continued forward, rather loudly and continued to glance around, still not seeing mama. After a few minutes it was safe to assume she was ahead, and we continued trudging toward Damascus.

So that’s it. On April 19th, at 8:20am in the state of Tennessee I saw my first bear along the AT.

We made it into Damascus by noon. I can't believe...such a huge milestone today!