Our second day on the trail started around 7:00 in the morning. After packing up, we finally hit the ole dusty around 8:00 with a big day ahead of us. We were planning on hiking 17.3 miles today, which is a pretty big day after you've been hiking for a few weeks, so for our second day out it was huge. The elevation changed from as low as 3160 ft. to as high as 5500 ft. Along with the long miles and large elevation changes, we were lucky enough to be rained on off and on all day. The temperature was also pretty chilly, getting down to about 55F, which when you add rain and strong winds into the mix can leave you shivering while walking. Not the best conditions for our first full day, but we pushed on, its all part of the experience right. The day sounds worse than I'm making it seem though. We were greeted by the wild ponies of the Grayson Highlands State Park, which were not shy at all. The ponies are notorious for coming up to hikers and licking the salt off their packs and shirts, which happened to us. We had to barrel our way through a pack of about 10 of them to keep moving. Pretty neat thing to see. At the end of the day we finally made it to Wise Shelter where we stayed the night with a very nice couple Kevin and Audrey. They were doing a long weekend hike and had brought with them a feast for dinner that night which included rice, tortillas, beans, avocado, chicken sausage and a few other things that they generously shared with us. They even had chocolate for dessert, which just put our dinner to shame. Even though most of the day we were rained on, the miles down and great night with super people kept our spirits high.
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