:: Sunday, June 08, 2003 ::

Saturday, may 31 2003
It’s the sort of calm before the storm , which is ironic considering how windy and churning the weather has been here today at the KOA campgrounds. Everbody is here tonight: Mr. Burnette, Mr. Tingle, Ben and AJ, Mr. Forshee and Walker, Mr. Page and Robert, Nathan, and myself. There is 56 miles ahead of us, 7 of them being tommorow. All of my gear is holding up well, I feel that I’ll be utilizing my rain gear much more than I did at Philmont. I sort of wish I had some working conversion pants, but my rain pants will do fine. My tent is the absolute best, I’m a Mountain Hardware convert. I look forward to awesome views, rolling hills and fields, wildlife, and whatever else might come my way on the trail this week. The more I hike, the more relaxed and careless I am; at what point that starts to hinder my experience I don’t know. Jeez it’s windy out right now. I should be going to sleep but I have so much banked up from this past week I can’t. I do miss Megan a lot already, she’s such an intricate part of my life right now so it wouldn’t make sense to leave her out of this journal, especially since this whole hike when I’m daydreaming to pass distance it’ll be of her. I love that carefree, blissful zombie feeling from hiking, its what its all about; That, and a big sort of humbling, peaceful, self-rewarding journey. I think I’ve done enough rambling for tonight, I’ll stare at my PCT dreaming of hiking now…

Sunday June 1, 2003
Made it to our first stop, about 7 miles in from Highway 62. The miles have flown by a lot faster than expected, I could go a lot further. Brian vents his “Virginia sucks” midset on all of us, but I think its just something to pass the time. I have my tent set up near Little Wolf Creek, the water gurgling in the background is very relaxing and entrancing. Lots of reminiscing has happened, but not anything really worthy to be reminisced about later. Hikes always start of slow like this.

Monday June 2, 2003
Well, I made it through the second day… quite a wake up call from our little hike yesterday in. It started off steep then leveled off about 4 miles in, then we stopped after 5 miles for lunch at Jenkins shelter. There was an interesting Scottish guy there who had bought $200 boots then cut the backs off of them “because my Achilles was killin’ meh mate” Interesting folks on the trail here. Oh yes, we took the high water trail because of flooding on the normal AT. After lunch was an insane climb, one of those that completely exhausts you mentally as much as physically. I was beginning to have strikingly severe flashbacks of Mt. Phillips for perhaps ¼ of a mile before I met Mr. Page at the top. From there it was easy gradual downhill for about a mile until we reached the turnoff for the Davidson campsite and water. We went down for the spectacular view of the garden (a giant fiew of acres of fields and a dairy farm) but ended up spending the night at the top near the trail due to lack of tent space. This brings us to now, where I’m just starting to get sweaty, gritty, greasy, and snot-encrusted like every good hiker- and I love it. Tomorrow is an easy 9 miles along a ridge, hoorah!

Tuesday June 3, 2003
We made it from Davidson campsite to the Chestnut Knob shelter; a good long 9 miles to really break us in. It started off innocent enough, with a 6 mile gradual downhill hike towards walker gap. We sang several dozen songs along the way (including Weird Al and Journey) and it actually went by a lot faster than planned (or assumed) and thus we arrived at walker’s gap 7 miles in at 1 pm. I felt pretty good, except for a throbbing sensation in both feet. We pumped some water (my MSR pump needs cleaning) then began our ascent at about 2. God, I knew it was going to be a tough 2 miles uphill, but not THAT insane. The fog had cleared on the ridge from earlier this morning, but the ascent was so tough and steep I zombied out and plowed through. There were some realy cool trees that ran along a barbed-wire fence on the ridge, some of them were oaks that had to be at least 125 years old. Many of them had grown around and consumed parts of the barbed wire into themselves, very cool. After about an hour and a half of hiking, I reached this shelter, finding the opposite-bound AT crew waiting for us there. Everybody is in good spirits, we’ve exchanged info on where we’ve been and what each of us can look forward to. This shelter is mega-nice, atop of a beautiful field I wish I could see more than 100 feet distance of. At least its stopped raining. I can’t wait for a good night’s sleep and a hot meal! Worst service ever!!! Ever!!!! EVER!!!!!!

Wednesday June 4, 2003
Today was our longest day yet, 9 miles from Chestnut Knob shelter to wherever we are now, Knot Maul Knob or something like that. Right now I’m listening to the three through-hikers talk in the shelter, its great to hear them talk about random stuff. The girl is jewish and the two guys are Christian, the jokes exchanged are great. We began with a 4.5 mile descent through fields and mud, then another mile until lunch at Lick Creek. After that was a pretty hefty 5 mile climb to where we are now. What the… this through-hiker is joining the peace corps and has been to places like Hungary! But anyways, tonight was Mexican dinner night, then we all came up with trail names. I’ll keep trail names on the inside unless there are requests. Oh yes, we finally found out what is inside of an easy cheese can behind the illustrious black stopper in the bottom. It’s either air, or a very small breed of asian known as Aerosol who raise the roof to apply pressure to the cheese by listening to 50 cent, or do an irish jig depending on the tilt of the can. Wow are we messed up.

Thursday June 5, 2003
I am completely exhausted screw writing.

Friday June 6, 2003
I didn’t write yesterday because I got caught up chatting with Brian and Nathan in our tents. Nathan the burrito bandito! Today was our last real day, the longest, and most fittingly, the best. We woke up at 6 and got out by 8 to give us an hours jumpstart into Atkins. It seemed like forever but after 5 miles of downhill and fields we reached Dairy Queen. Good God, a gigantic cheeseburger, fries, xxxxxtra Mr. Pibb, and a giant oreo blizzard. So we stuffed ourselves there, then hiked about 2.5 miles to a pretty cool old museum and schoolhouse place, circa 1900. There was a really cool old geography book in the schoolhouse copywright 1901… a very interesting read. After that it was another 2 mile saunter up to here at Chatfield Memorial shelter, 7 miles from the Mt. Rogers partnership shelter where we’re ending our trek tomorrow. The 11 miles today actually wasn’t that bad; my pack is light with no food (save for a cheeseburger hiked 6 miles up here from Dairy Queen). I have taken some pretty awesome pictures (we tipped our tree!) and have a lot of good memories to take home from this trek. I’ll acclimate fairly well to the internet, TV, hot pockets, soda, and laziness apparent in my life at home. More people need to experience the AT, that’s all I can say. Shoot, this guy passed by an hour ago with his 12 year old son, they’re both through-hiking the whole thing! The mountain laurel we saw this year was awesome. Okay, I need some sleep to get ready for tomorrow. Bye. I always start hiking on the 56 of the hour, 56 miles total, 56 dollars in change after Dairy Queen, how freakish.

And that brings us to now. I’m done and a bit tired, it’s actually about 2 am right now and I feel a little sleepy. I don’t want to be completely worthless when seeing Megan tomorrow. I’ll talk more about the trek later if any of you care, which most of you quite unfortunately don’t care and understand. At any rate, good night!

:: Floydthebarber 6/08/2003 02:07:00 AM [+] ::
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