My Trails

6/6/12 741 miles
We all left town at different times. Kleenex left first, a day before the rest of us. She has a mail drop 80 miles north and needed to hurry to get there by Saturday morning. I wanted to walk around town in my new shoes for a while before heading into the woods so I left the next morning.

It’s odd how you can see so many people in town, but once on the trail, you can walk for hours without seeing anyone. I passed two shelters and finally stopped at the third 18 miles out of town. I thought I might be all alone at the shelter but several hikers showed up later. There was no place level to pitch my tent, and anyway it looked like rain, so I slept in the shelter with four others.

I guess I’m developing the thruhikers attitude about the preciousness of food. I dropped a piece of granola bar in the dirt, picked it up without a thought, and ate it. The standard joke about thruhikers is: a tourist drops some food on the ground, the thruhikers looks longingly at the food on the ground and asks, “Are you going to eat that?”

4/30 – 274 miles.
It was a short 3.5 miles into Hot Springs this morning. Five of us descended into town and hit the first restaurant we came to. I had a cheese and sausage omelet with hash browns. It didn’t take me long to eat it.

I booked a room at a local motel and showered off four days of sweat and grime. A lot of my trail mates are staying at the campground outside of town or have booked a bunk at the local hostel – trying to save a little money.

Today will be a rest, resupply, laundry, PO, outfitter, and eat day. I picked up my new tent (thanks Daryl for ordering it) and used the same box to mail my old one home. I picked up a new trail guide at the outfitters and used their Wifi to update my blog.

I will probably leave town tomorrow. It’s easy to stay another day but I want to avoid the trap. I wrote in the shelter register that “towns have a tractor beam pulling us in.” It’s easy to get caught in the comfort of civilization. I think one of the lessons of hiking the trail is learning to appreciate what we take for granted every day.

4/25 – 207 miles
Today was a short day from Clingmans Dome to Icewater Spring Shelter. The weather was foggy in the morning but soon burned off to a nice clear sky with many spectacular views.

I passed through Newfound Gap about noon. The parking lot was full of people, taking pictures and enjoying the weather. It’s always funny when tourists come up to us and start asking questions. They can’t believe what we are doing when we tell them how far we have walked and where we are headed. Sometimes they will feed us like starving wild animals. I met a man from Quebec that had hiked the AT in 2004 and he gave me a candy bar and an orange.

Three miles further on I came to the shelter where I would stay for the night. In the Smokys it’s always good to arrive at the shelter early. Many weekend hikers fill the shelters early and late arriving thruhikers are forced to tent outside. I never minded tenting but it rains a lot in the Smokys. There was a good chance you would have to pack up a wet tent in the morning.

4/19 – 15 miles
It was a long downhill hike into Fontana Dam. I stepped out onto the road leading to town at about 3:00 in the afternoon. There was some excitement in town because police cars were streaking up and down the road with their sirens screaming. We learned later that some young hiker had too much to drink and got in a fight with some people at a shelter near Fontana Dam. The people called the police and they came and arrested the drunk kid. He was later released and told not to go onto the Smokys. That would have been the end of it except the kid wouldn’t let it go. He started up the trail into the National Park threatening to use a knife on the people that called the police on him.

News like this travels fast through hikers on the trail and it wasn’t long before the Park police and sheriff’s crew – with help from several tips by thru-hikers – captured him and took him into custody. Now he’s really in trouble. Now he has federal charges against him.

Incidents like this are rare on the trail, but it just goes to show that even on the AT you are not completely insulated from the bad side of human nature.

There are a few hikers dropping off the trail, and it always makes us sad when we hear of someone giving up. I met a young lady a couple of days before reaching Fontana Dam, and hiked off an on with her as we closed the distance to town. As we got to know each other I realized why I was so happy to hike with her – she reminded me of Karen, my soggy-shoe hiking companion. This hike was the first AT expedition without my daughter and I was missing her.

When I hiked out of Fontana Dam, I heard that my new friend could not go on. She had tented alone in the rain the night before, and come close to hypothermia. That, and equipment problems caused her to call her hike off.

This post is out of order. Sorry! 4/15/12 – 11 miles – The shuttle picked us up at the motel this morning and took us back to the trail. It took almost an hour by the time the elderly driver rounded up passengers at two motels and stopped at two gas stations to get twenty dollars of gas. The first station was closed and it took the driver several minutes to walk into the second store. He shuffled like the old man character that Tim Conway played. One of the hikers jumped out to pump gas or we would still be there.

The hiking was fairly easy most of the day. There was a lot of uphill to start but it was graded well. Once the trail reached the mountain ridges, we had views for miles in all directions. The weather has been great for views. We have been lucky so far.

After a particularly hard climb over 5000 feet, we came to a stone tower on top of Wayah Bald built by the CCC in 1938. It was used as a fire tower for years, and then in 1983, it was renovated into a tourist attraction. On one of the placues that outlined distant mountains, it showed Clingmans Dome in the Smokys 26 miles away. It will take us 80 miles to reach it by trail.

Tonight I am camped with two hikers my age. They are called Saturday (because she thinks every day on the trail is like Saturday) and Beatnik, a retired teacher.

I know, Wilson, it’s time for bed.