Days 25-34, we're at Mile 405!

Today I'm writing from a hostel computer, the Vango Abby Memorial Hostel outside of Roan Mountain, TN. The computers we used in Erwin created some serious problems, so we apologize. Here's what we've been doing lately...

Day 25: Leaving Hot Springs. Mile 274.8, .9 miles today. We tried to leave, really we did. We bought a 6 pack in preparation for our visit to the actual hot springs in town before we hiked out 4-6 miles. They were booked. Until 10:15 p.m. So we took our beer by the river at the edge of town, where the trail leaves the area, and drank it. And then we realized the store was only a 5 minute walk away...so we got more beer and camped just a mile out of town.

Day 26: 288.7, 13.9 today. We woke to rain, but packed our tent and hit the very big ups leaving Hot Springs. We said goodbye to our favorite food, a home-made cheese stick with salami inside! Thanks, Tavern! We got about 10 miles in to the first shelter, where Jesse wanted to call it a day. It was cold, very windy, and we were frigid. But the shelter was facing directly into the cold wind and rain, so I urged him to keep hiking, at least until we got behind the mountain and out of the wind. We managed another 4 miles (we wanted to do more, but...). Jesse lost his favorite base layer. The brown one he's been wearing pretty much daily since he bought it. He changed shirts at the shelter when we decided to move on, and even though we felt like we had another 3 miles in us, we decided to set up camp and he'd run back a ways on the trail to see if he could find it. No dice, although we heard recently that a friend of ours on the trail, a kid named 'Doc' from PA, found it, picked it up, and is now wearing it happily. We're glad to have trail magic-ed it to him!

Day 27: 306.2, 17.5 today. We started St. Patty's Day in the rain, sad we weren't in a bar. Right next to where we camped at the road was a sketchy, rundown old garage with a sign "Mom's" on it. There was a sign on the trail about 1/2 mile back suggesting that we'd find it. We walked into it, met the owners, ate Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches, and were quite pleased with the place! It was very sketch, with ripped cardboard lists denoting what was to be found in the coolers. The inside was dark, smelled and looked like my grandfather's old shed - wood burner included - but it was GREAT! The owner told us the place used to belong to his mother, hence the name. They used to make moonshine in the 50's and 60's, and the place was also once a honky tonk with 2 jukeboxes going at once (and it was tiny). I was in love. No green beer for us, but we hiked a ton of miles and met some cool people.

Day 28: 321.1, 15.9 today. We are noticing that 15 miles is the new 12 for us. Our bodies ache at the end of the day, but its not insurmountable and we still have a little more in us most days. Today, around mile 13, we reached the top of our last up, which opened into a meadow. We haven't had a lot of luck with meadows on top of mountains, or balds, but it was sunny and beautiful. It was the first nice day of hiking in a while. The last nice day we had was during our non-hiking time in Hot Springs, hiking, its been chilly, wet, or windy (or all 3) for a while.

Day 29: 338.1, 17 miles! We pushed 2 miles past the shelter so that we could get into Erwin, TN in time to 1) get McD's breakfast, and 2) get all our chores done and leave Erwin the same day. If the shelter had had a privy, we would have been more keen to stay.

Day 30: 346.2, 8.1. You know the story of Erwin and the library. We hiked in, spent all day in Erwin, googled the location of the only bar in Erwin at the library - apparently the only effective thing the internet could do there - and found the AWESOMEST hole in the wall bar. We weren't sure it was open, or if it had been in 15 years, when we walked up. But there were cars in the driveway, so we gave it a shot. I've never been scared to open a bar door for fear of being unwelcome, but I was. And I was wrong. In it sat 2 older couples, another lady, the barmaid/owner, and a cute dog named Bailey. We sat there for an hour or so and drank and chatted. Everyone was extremely welcoming and one guy offered to give us a ride anywhere we needed to go in town. Since we were going to dinnner at the Corner Grill only a block away, we kindly refused, but we thought we might come back after dinner, buy a round, and hope the offer was still available. It wasn't necessary because we struck up a conversation with another great couple at dinner, the Byrds, and they gave us a ride back to our packs which were being babysat by Uncle Johnny's hostel. While the town was spread out and not very libation friendly, the people were amazing. And we hear that the ribs at Hawg and Dawg are not to be missed. Other NOBO thru hikers, if you're going thru on a Friday, call Hawg and Dawg on Thursday and have them put a rack on for you. Apparently that's what the locals do so they don't miss out. Thanks, Erwin!

Day 31: 361, 14.8. We hiked hot dogs out of Erwin and when we made camp on this day, we grilled each and every one of them and ate them. Yum. Ew. We accompanied that with some buttered elbow macaroni with garlic and pepper. A feast fit for the gods.

Day 32: 376, 15 miles. Against my better judgement knowing that a storm was coming, Jesse convinced me to stay in the Roan Mtn. shelter, the highest one on the AT. I'm glad he did. It was a freaking cottage! Four walls, a door, and even cedar shakes on the sides. And with us and our friends (who have been piggy backing us since before Hot Springs), it was a nice, warm bungalow. Our friends are the only people we've seen for more than a week on the trail. They are IronMan, Extra Mile, and 'the germans', a trio of german people, only one of whom I caught a name for - Pillow. We haven't seen our younger friends, Mountain Mime and Doc, in a while. We left them in Erwin, coming in as we were leaving. I know the trail is a social place, but these are the only people we've gotten to know more than 'hey, how are ya' or the like. At this writing, the group of 5 is ahead of us, pushing to a hostel a bit further ahead. Depending on the weather, we'll see them again soon. Hopefully M&M and Doc will catch up, too. They're much faster than we are, so I expect we'll see them soon.

Day 33: 391, 15 miles. We got remote trail magic - a term I've coined for the only trail magic I had originally expected to see starting as early as we have - where a box of food or cooler of drinks is left by a roadside for hikers to decimate. The can of pepsi was A.Mazing. Caffeine is miraculous. It was snowing when we woke up at the shelter, and that turned to drizzle as we walked north. But we hit a bald at about 2 p.m., and the wind was blowing us off the trail. I literally had to use my poles to keep me from moving off trail by a foot with every step. It was 10x worse than Max Patch. It was 50 minutes of hell. I had to lean into the knee and ankle that have been bothering me to stay straight, and they were really tired when we finished. But we were frozen, so we had to keep going. Half of Jesse's beard and all of my left side were covered in ice crystals. When we got below the blowing wind, the trail was so rocky that we still couldn't stop. And my body ached. When we finally got to our campsite, I was dog-tired. But Jesse insisted we hitch to the nearby town for food. A father/daughter picked us up and gave us a tour of Roan Mtn. before they left us at the Dairyland, and Angela and her daughter Carolina Rain (pretty name, right?) and Skylar gave us a ride back to the gap near our campsite. The kindness of people on the trail never ceases to amaze me. It was 10degrees that night, so the warmth - physical and emotional - was really appreciated.

Day 34: 405, 14 miles. This was about the prettiest stretch of trail yet. We hiked 14 nice miles into a hike in/hike out shelter, Vango Abby Memorial. We're staying in the room above the bunkhouse, with t.v., and we bought eggs for breakfast tomorrow. Scotty, the owner, is a wonderful guy. We had a great chat with him when we came in, and we look forward to sending him a postcard when we finish our hike thanking him for the hospitality. Highly recommend this place to any thru hikers! We know its going to be freezing tonight, with an early morning snowstorm. So with the heat and the eggs, we're sure to get a late start. But we want to be in Damascus by Friday a.m. so we can catch the MSU basketball game. Okay, I want to be there because it's a stepping stone to getting me to a town for my birthday, basketball/beer is just the carrot I'm using to get Jesse to play along. Wish us luck, cuz that's 60 miles away...in 4 days...!

 Me by Mountaineer Falls today, Day 34. Don't let the sunlight fool you, its not quite 40 degrees!

 Jesse and I dueling at the North Carolina/Tennessee border.

 Sunrise at the Fontana 'Hilton' shelter.

Jesse after the hell bald..

A nice vein in metamorphic rock

Still in Erwin...

So I'm bogarting 2 computers in the Erwin Public Library. One computer is (very, very slowly) uploading 4 or 5 pictures from my camera to the blog. After about 25 minutes of waiting, I thought I'd try to send a few emails and give my parents and my advisor some pictures. The browser system here is so old, I literally CANNOT compose an email. Sorry! I tried! Anyway, I'll try to highlight what we've been up to. Since Hot Springs, it was rainy and cold for a couple days. We hiked a well-known AT bald, Max Patch, and it was hell. There were 60 mph wind gusts trying to knock us off our feet as we hiked up and all around this ~5acre bald. The views would have been gorgeous had we time to look, but the wind was stinging our faces and I had tears flowing down my cheeks the whole time. The AT is a mean bedfellow. Also, and I don't remember if we've shared this, but Jesse's zipper has stopped working on his sleeping bag, so I've had to zip him up each night with his auxillary zipper (that sits at the bottom for ventilation). At the post office today here in Erwin we received a replacement part that should fix it. We went over Big Bald yesterday, and it was much nicer. It was sunny, in the mid-fifties or maybe even 60, and we loved walking around without trees encroaching upon us. We hit a meadow about 2 miles before we stopped the day before, and we knew it was coming. We had hiked 15 miles to get there, the last couple of them felt like they were straight up. When we hit the meadow, that scene from Bambi ran through my head about Bambi getting excited and rushing into the meadow. The I remembered the last 2 miles we had to hike and it was just like Bambi's mom stepping in front of me and curbing my excitement. I will say one thing about the AT in North Carolina. Most of the day you're not pleased at the trail and its creators because they've chosen to take you 7 miles south (yep, away from Maine) to avoid a few homes or an extra 6 miles to do a lap around the mid-section of a mountain. But at about 5:30 p.m. when you're feet are sore and you're tired as all get out, knowing you don't have to climb to the top of the mountain makes you praise the AT trail maintenance crew. We're not too far from the official end of our time in North Carolina. We've been skirting the boundary of TN for a while now, so its about time to enter the 3rd state officially. I realize this is quite disjointed, but we're still waiting for the 6th picture to upload. I hope the fans back home ;) appreciate it, because this is serious town time we could have been spending at the cinema or the one bar that Jesse had to google for us to find. I apologize, we could only get 3 pictures to load. But after 1.5 hours, we're headed to lunch and then going to hitch back to the hostel and hit the trail. I hope you enjoy the pictures, we tried really hard! Cheers!

From a Library in Erwin, TN

Hi all! I'm posting from a library in Erwin, TN in an attempt to get some of my pictures to upload. The web browser isn't well supported by my blogging platform, so I'll do my best here, but no guarantees. Still...probably better than anything I could do in a shelter! Its day 30. We're 341 miles into the trail. And in the last 3 days we went 50 miles. That's craz

y. But we're starting to figure out this whole hiking thing, and it is starting to go more smoothly for us. Whenever it is cold and rainy here, its pretty difficult. So if you see rain in Tennessee or North Carolina in the forecast, send us warm thoughts. Okay, here come the pics. If things go well, I'll add some text! Cheers!

Day 20 - 24

So, we have given the Appalachian trail a personality. Rather, I think we have discovered it. In Georgia, the trail takes you up and over every single mountain. Its like, "oh look, here's another mountain, the view is almost exactly the same as from the last mountain, but let's take you up there just to confirm." Then, north Carolina does its best to take you up near the top and then walk you ALL the way around it. It goes out of its way to make a mile as the crow flies more like a ten mile hike. The smoky mountains are their own beast. Apart from the shelters, which are equipped with their own fireplaces, the smoky mountains are way over-rated. The trail follows the ridgeline through a number of pointless ups and downs. And you can't tent, you must make it to an awkwardly spaced shelter location.
Anyway, we are in Hot Springs now. We had to do a 17 mile day and two 13 mile days to get here, probably our best stretch of mileage. I'm pretty proud of us. We spent the night at elmers, and I would recommend that place to everyone. What a cool guy, and what an amazing old Victorian house! It was an honor to stay there.

Day 21: mile 230.1, 12.9 miles
Day 22: mile 247.7, 17.6 miles
Day 23: mile 260.8, 13.1 miles
Day 24: mile 273.9, 13.1 miles

Days 13 - 19

We are in Gatlinburg today spending our first zero day. I would have liked to wait a bit longer, but the last few days have done a number on the tendons of our feet, and we pushed longer miles yesterday so we could spend a day in town. We got a maildrop from Tom and Brenda with our first resupply. It saves us some cash and time so ee can explore the town. So that's what we're doing today, day 19.

Day 13: 144.0 miles, 8.3 today. Today was a great and terrible day. We hiked an easy mile into the NOC, ate breakfast and ordered pizza to go there, and spent a few hours uploading thee last blog post your read. That was great. But hiking uphill for 7.5 miles in cold, while in a less than sober state was less good. And Jesse hates ups. Oh man, it was bad. Nite hiking into the shelter, cold...ugh.

Day 14: 155.2, 11.2 today. The cold clouds and wind formed gorgeous, what the Brits call whore ice, I think cuz it grows sideways on the branches. The ice grew like stalactite crystals on either side of the branch or leaf it grew on. I've got pics on my camera, sometimes using them makes posting these blog posts difficult, so well see if I can share them today. Anyway, we camped in a bunch of this ice, which fell through the course of the day.

Day 15: 165.8, 10.6 today
We hiked into Fontana today. You have to stay in a shelter once you enter the smoky mountains, so we had to do shorter than our preferred 12 to 13 mile days the last few days. The shelter at the entrance has showers, and they were amazing! Firts shower since day ten. We supplied in the one open store in Fontana, which had beer on tap and made to order personal pizzas and hot dogs. Yep, you guessed it, we ate lunch there and had a couple beers. We even bought Busch light for the shelter. We bought our permits for the national park and proceeded to the shelter.

Day 16: 179.6 miles,13.8 today. The shelters in the smoky mtns have fireplaces in them. We stayed with the British couple from timeoutadventures.co.UK, and a few others. It was fun to meet the brits since I'd read their blog before we left and they had been just ahead of us for days.

Day 17: I had bad dreams and so had trouble getting motivated the first few hours. It was downright yucky. But we stopped for lunch, the sun came out, and my full belly helped turn the day around. We hiked 1.7 miles short of our planned day, but it was because we knew the next shelter was full. As it ended up, we had a shelter, complete with jesse-made fire, all to ourselves (okay, and the mice).

Day 18: we hiked 12.5 miles, the last 7 or so with a German named Heiko. We got trail magic in the form of stickers from a couple doing a section hike, it was 65 degrees and sunny, and when we arrived at newfound gap, a couple - Godspeed and Mountain Mama- greeted us with sandwiches, fruit, pop, and a free ride into Gatlinburg!

That who knows what today will bring, but we are looking forward to a day without walking (too much).

Pics!

Days 6 thru 12, mile 136.3

I will apologize for the brevity of this post. I'd written a lovely one in Franklin, nc, on day 10, but my phone won't let me post it. Now I'm hurriedly typing at a restaurant near Byron Center, nc.

I'll ramble a bit about all of the days together at the end, but give a brief overview of each day first.

Day 6: we hiked 12.3 miles to end at deep gap shelter, just 3 miles from haiawassee, ga, our first town resupply. We met 2 guys there, animal planet from cincinnati, and city slicka from Boston. We had good chats and forgot the pains of Kelly knob, a bitch of a mountain.

Day 7: pulled 12.6 miles with a 2 hour in and out resupply in town. After 3 miles hiking to a road, we were picked up by the 2nd car that passed. We rode in the back of their pick up and they went slow so we wouldn't freeze. Boy did we move fast! They dropped us off about 5 ft from the front door of the grocery store. Then we got in line for coffee at the Starbucks and a gentleman asked if he could buy us coffee. We were so grateful. A deli sandwich and food later, we hitched back to the gap and hiked another 9 miles with full bellies and packs.

Day 8: pulled 12.1 miles.it was really really cold, like in the teens. We were nice and warm in our bags though.

Day 9:we hiked up Albert mountain!  It was a big fifteen hundred feet up in a third of a mile. It was cold in today too, but less so than the day before.

Day 10: hiked 7.2 miles before eleven am. Then we spent the day in Franklin, nc, showering, doing laundry, eating pizza, and drinking beer at the sapphire inn. Was great to feel clean.

Day11: watched 3 hours of dogs and cats 101. Left the hotel at eleven and hit the trail by noon. We hike another eleven miles and stayed at wayah bald shelter with red beard and Matt. Nice guys, I hope we run into them again. A nice family came upon me peeing in the woods, but were cool about it. They told us they left trail magic in the form of honey buns by a streAm at the top of the mountain, which motivated us. 

Day 12: spent the night after a huge 15.5 mile trail day with some people from Michigan out here for spring break. They had bourbon, and so became my absolute best friends.

Were in the NOC now, eating and supplying to head into Fontana. The smokeys are next! Were nervous, but if the weather is alright for us, we will do alright.

Breakfast is here! Cheers!