Easy Trail

I walked 35.3 miles through beautifully lush, green, and snow-free forest today, on nearly perfect, soft, pine-needly trail the whole way. It felt good to set the cruise control for a while, not worrying about my knee.

In the morning I walked with a semi-retired radiologist from Maine, on his first day of a section hike (hi Robin!), and in the afternoon I met two southbound section hikers who recognized me from this blog (hi Don and Richard!), but I didn’t see any other through-hikers today. At least I *think* not; twice in the last two nights I’ve been passed by a mysterious pair of hikers around 9:30 pm, two hours after dark – who is walking that late, and why?