Day 27 April 22

Yesterday while hiking I passed two day hikers. They weren't moving the swiftest but they weren't overly slow either. Well last night around 9:30pm they stumbled through our campsite. Cold from the wind and near freezing temperatures they stopped for a moment and heated themselves by our fire. One of the other hikers gave them his headlamp as they didn't have one and they went about their way (I was in my tent while all of this was taking place). Then around 11pm I thought we were under attack as two four wheelers came blasting into our campsite. I would like to remind everyone that the appalachian trail is a foot trail only, no motorized vehicles or bikes allowed. So now you should be able to understand how terrifying and confusing it would be to sleepily process the idea of having two loud and aggressively driven machines came raging toward your 2mm thick tent. Needless to say I did not get out of my tent. It turns out the the two day hikers were over due and someone had called search and rescue, hence the four wheelers. One of the thru hikers was still up and told search and rescue that the day hikers hiked by about an hour ago and continued on northbound. With the new information in hand search and rescue was off in a flash, disappearing just as quickly as they had appeared. But the funniest thing of all was that one of the thru hikers slept through the entire thing!
The rest of the day ended up being great. I secretly had a goal of hiking 25miles; however, Sleeping Beauty, Puddin and Patty cakes were feeling quite rough and were struggling (mentally and physically). As a result, we ended up taking a 2.5hr siesta. The siesta was amazing. I laid in the sun, soaked up the heat, dozed off and on, and read my book. Three o'clock rolled around and Nova caught up to us so the group of us set off together toward the next shelter. We reached Roan High Knob shelter by six o'clock but decided to continue on as it was bloody cold there. This shelter is actually the highest shelter on the trail at 6194ft. We finally stopped and camped in a field for the night making our mileage 19miles. It was such a great day filled with such a feeling of contentment.