Day 47: A Pleasant Day For a Walk

April 23: By morning, the storm clouds had blown away leaving a beautiful, clear blue sky. It was brutally cold, no less so for the high winds that continued to pelt the shelter, but at least rain was not an issue.

A beautiful sunrise!

The hiking today was largely uneventful. Much of it was easy with well-graded switchbacks. I suffered a small bout of disappointment at Laurel Creek when I spotted an ice chest--trail magic! But when I popped it open, I found it emptied of any cold drinks I had craved. There were some dinners available--the add hot water kind of variety--but I had plenty of food and passed on what was available.

I arrived at Laurel Creek at about 3:00 in the afternoon, and the Four Horsemen had already arrived and set up camp. They even had a campfire already burning! Although the high winds never really stopped, they couldn't reach so deep in this canyon. It was tempting to stop and set up camp with them, but it was too early in the day and the weather too nice for me to quit so early.

I loaded up with water and continued onwards. I decided to camp between shelters far from any water sources so all of the water I'd need for the rest of the day, the night and the next morning I'd have to carry in.

The trail climbed out of the valley containing Laurel Creek, back into the area where winds could reach again. The winds proved to be my biggest difficulty in finding a good place to camp. I didn't want to camp somewhere exposed to the winds that could make cooking difficult or blow away my gear! Eventually I settled for a small area on the side of a hill that overlooked a valley through the mostly barren trees. I could see a town down there far in the distance which I assumed was Bland, a small trail town that everyone on the trail expect for myself was planning to resupply at.

There was a slight breeze all evening and into the night--it wasn't completely protected from the strong winds higher up the mountain, but it was at a manageable level and I cowboy camped feeling that the tarp was unnecessary. A splendid little campsite!

Although it was clear and sunny, the temperatures were brutally cold and the wind fierce, which is why I walked out of the shelter looking like this!

Three of the Four Horsemen taking a lunch break. Blueberry, as you can see, is still carrying around that cow-bone mask. However, he only put it on his face when he stopped. I'm pretty sure he didn't hike with it on! (At least not whenever I saw him hiking.)

The Jenkins Shelter apparently has a severe bear problem! I wouldn't be camping here for the night and didn't much worry about it, but notes in the shelter's register told of a scary story where a bear tried to raid the food here just two night before.

Laurel Creek was my last place to fill up with water until tomorrow.

The trail crosses Laurel Creek on this bridge.

They kind of look like pinecones growing directly out of the ground, don't they? =)

It might have been cold, but spring is in the air!

My campsite for the night, on the side of a mountain. The view of bland is off the photo on the right, and Disciple, who passed me after I set up camp, described my campsite as being on the edge of a "cliff." It's quite steep down that slope, but calling it a cliff seemed like something of an exaggeration to me!

Day 46: The Butterfly Effect

April 22: It didn’t rain during the night—yea! Weather forecasts included a slight chance of rain and I took my chances by not setting up my tarp, so I was glad no rain materialized. The morning broke with clear, blue skies. Life was good!

Along this stretch of trail early in the morning, we quietly passed the 1/4 mark of the trail. =)

I got a head start on the trail before the Four Horsemen, mostly because they were playing around trying to get a fire started. I love a fire as much as the next guy, but I prefer my campfires at night where I can linger around to enjoy them. In the morning, I just want to get hiking, which is what I did.

An hour or two into my hiking, though, I noticed a large bone from—what I hoped and guessed was a cow—tucked behind a log and mostly hidden from view. If I had to guess, I’d say it came from the pelvis of a cow, but I’m no expert on cow anatomy or bones so don’t quote me on that. But it was a large bone, and it seemed a shame that it was mostly hidden behind this log so I pulled it out and dragged it onto the trail for all of the hikers behind me to enjoy. Every hiker likes to see the bones of former AT hikers on the trail, right? Even cattle? =)

Little did I know what that small act would cause later in the day… I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Butterfly Effect, where a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa ends up causing a hurricane in North Carolina. Small changes way back in time can have a major impact in unanticipated ways in the present, and my small act of moving that cow bone set in motion a chain of events that nobody could have predicted…

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I looked at the cow bone, sitting there on the trail, but it didn’t seem ominous enough so I scratched into the dirt of the trail the word “DIE” in all capital letters. It was a half-hearted attempt since I didn’t really want to mess around with it very much—not to mention that I didn’t want to cause any real damage to the trail tread either—so I wasn’t even sure if anyone would notice the word. But I knew they’d notice the bone. It was impossible to miss since I laid it out literally right in the middle of the trail.

Then I continued hiking and forgot about the bone. I’d never be seeing it again. So I thought…

A bit further up the trail, I stopped to examine the back of my foot. It was starting to hurt and felt like a blister might have been forming, and sure enough, a tiny blister had formed on the back of my foot just above the heel. I attributed it to the new shoes I was wearing—my feet had certainly been trail hardened by now, but the shoes were still needed some breaking in. The blister was so small I thought popping it might actually be difficult, so I slapped a band-aide on it and moleskin on top of it which I hoped would be sufficient to take care of the problem. If the blister got any bigger later in the day or by the time I stopped for camp, I’d pop it then. I also named it ‘Georgia’ after the first state where the AT started. If I got a second blister, I’d call it North Carolina. =)

While messing with my foot, a couple of the Four Horsemen caught up with me including, most notably, Blueberry. Blueberry was the butterfly flapping its wings because what should he be carrying in his pack but a giant cow bone! WTF?!

He thought the bone was awesome and couldn’t let it go by. Despite its size and weight, he added it to his pack—for purposes yet to be determined. Blueberry seemed almost surprised that nobody else had already grabbed up such a great bone. I hadn’t imagined that anyone would want to carry it, much less the first person who happened across it on the trail. Now there’s the word “DIE” on the trail with absolutely no context anymore. (Speaking of which, when I mentioned writing the word DIE into the trail, Blueberry said he hadn’t noticed it—which didn’t really surprise me but still disappointed me.)

All four of the horsemen moved on ahead of me and I put the bone out of my head once again. I suspected I’d see it again since it was now ahead of me on the trail, but I didn’t really expect anything to come of it. What could Blueberry possibly do with a giant cow bone?

Never underestimate the Blueberry, though. I did, and I should have known better.

When I approached the next shelter on the trail, I saw three of the four horsemen sitting at the picnic table in front of it. The fact that Blueberry wasn’t at the table didn’t concern me at all—he was probably in the privy or taking a whiz behind the shelter or something, or had already continued hiking on ahead on the trail.

I was about to say hi to the group of three when I heard rustling from the bushes and leaves on my right. I turned to look and…

What the hell?! It was a person crawling on his belly through the brush with a mask made of a giant cow bone and holding a gun. I knew it was Blueberry, despite the mask. I knew it was Blueberry because of the mask! He had tied ropes to the ends of it that allowed him to hold it to his head and used the holes in the pelvis as eyeholes. The thing was freaky crazy! And where the heck did the gun come from?! It was obviously a fake gun since it had that red, plastic tip, but I had no idea Blueberry had been carrying a fake gun. It was, without a doubt, one of the most bizarre and strangest things I’d never seen hiking along a trail.

Little did I realize the chain of events I was setting into motion when I moved this bone onto the trail…

As it turned out, Blueberry hadn’t been carrying the fake gun—he had found it in the shelter and added it to his outfit. He decided to carry it and the cow-bone mask for the time being, clearing having a lot of fun with his newly found props. Before Blueberry got up from the ground, I told him to hang on a moment so I could snap his photo. Seeing is believing and if a photo is normally worth a thousand words, this one had to be worth ten thousand!

I wrote a comment in the shelter’s register to warn everyone that I spotted a crazy guy wearing a cow-bone mask with a gun creeping through the woods next to the shelter—a 100% true story, although I didn’t bother to mention that I was pretty certain the guy was harmless. =) I also wrote that I had a photo of the culprit and witnesses to prove the veracity of my claims. (Superman wrote below my entry that what I wrote was true and that he was a witness.)

I mention the register entry only because later I heard that Karaoke arrived at the shelter and apparently was pretty freaked out about my note—and telling others that he knew me and “knew” that I wouldn’t lie about something like that in a register. (Oh, if only he knew me better… and saw my April Fools Day entries! Although in this case, I actually was telling the truth, even if I left out important parts that might have alleviated his concerns.) He was so freaked out by my register entry, though, that he set up his tent in the shelter to protect himself against this strange man running around with a cow-bone mask and a gun. I didn’t quite understand how a tent would protect him, but this is only a story that I heard second-hand and perhaps something got lost in the translation, but it amused me to no end.

Eventually, we all continued onwards to the Chestnut Knob Shelter for the night at our own pace. By noon, the skies had filled with dark, ominous clouds. Late in the day, it sprinkled briefly and even hailed, but it wasn’t long enough or hard enough for me to call today an official rain day. The sweat from my body got my shirt more wet than the rain did, and hail isn’t particularly wet at all although I did pull out my umbrella for a few minutes to protect myself from being pelted by it. I soon put the umbrella away, though, because the wind was too strong for it. By the time I reached the shelter, the wind was strong enough to nearly blow someone over.

There were a LOT of stiles to climb over today!

The Chestnut Knob Shelter was packed when I arrived with all of the bed space already taken, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from sleeping in the shelter. The skies had stopped sprinkling, but the clouds still looked angry and the wind was absolutely ferocious. The wind-chill factor alone could freeze a man to death! This is one of the rare shelters with walls on all four sides to block the elements, and a door on the front that allowed us to keep out the wind completely. Nope, I was sleeping in the shelter, and I’d squeeze myself in by sleeping on the floor underneath one of the bunk spaces. No big deal. I’ve slept in worse conditions. There wasn’t a lot of head room, but you don’t really need much head room just to sleep. =)

And that was about it for the day. More people arrived at the shelter after I did and we squeezed everyone inside. Little Red slept on the picnic table inside and others crowded together on the floor under the bunks. I never got an official count of how many people were in the shelter that night, but we probably had close to double the “official” maximum capacity and still had floor space left over.

See the tat on my neck? I’m a total badass! =)

What the hell?! Really, I have only myself to blame. I should have known better than to leave Blueberry alone with a cow bone.

Blueberry has an imaginative mind. Cow-bone masks are just a symptom of it, but you can also see just from his lunch that he’s not “normal.”

The clouds were angry! There would be some sprinkling, a little hail and even thunder rolling over the hillsides.

The Chestnut Knob Shelter is one of the few shelters that actually have four walls and a front door to protect you from the elements—which is important because the wind was absolutely brutal up here! You’ll just have to take my word for it, though, since wind isn’t visible in the photo.

By sunset, the worst of the clouds had left and allowed for a rather nice sunset! But I was the only person who left the shelter to watch it due to the high winds and freezing air temperatures.

Day 45: Trail Gang Initiations

April 21: There’s a bus that runs regularly from Marion back to the Appalachian Trail which, I heard, cost a mere 50 cents per person. It’s an incredible bargain, but the downside is that it only runs three times each day. The first run was at 9:00, and I missed it. The second run was at 11:00, and I didn’t want to wait for it. Not to mention that I still needed to run by the post office a good mile away to mail my laptop ahead on the trail.

So I did something I almost never do: I called for a taxi. It could take me straight to the post office, then on to the trail. No waiting for other hikers. No waiting until the next bus. I wanted to get back on the trail and get hiking on my own schedule—even if it cost 44 times more than the bus would! Still, at $22, that’s less than taking Amanda out for dinner. ;o)

So I called for the taxi, and a fellow named Tim soon pulled up and gave me a ride. The car looked like something that I might have rode in when hailing a taxi in Central America. It looked beat up and well used, although nothing obvious was broken—no cracked windshield or missing doors. I threw my pack, package and some extra food I had in the back seat and jumped in the front passenger seat and introduced myself to Tim. Tim was a nice guy who spoke with a thick Southern accent I found difficult to understand—listening to him required intense concentration on my part and I wished Amanda was there to translate for me. =)

He took me to the post office where I jumped out and rushed into line. It cost 25 cents per minute to make him wait so I certainly didn’t linger, and fortunately, there was nobody in line to be helped—praised the lord! That never happens to me, and the one time it really mattered, there wasn’t a line!

Another hiker was there filling out some sort of paperwork. I didn’t really know him particularly well having only met him once before at the shelter on the wet, miserable day a couple of days before. He had been in for the night and I passed through not staying for more than about 15 minutes. He had gone into town and was planning to go back to the trail, and I said I had a taxi outside already if he wanted to join me. Splitting the cost of a taxi would have been awesome, but he turned me down. He had been planning to take the bus back with the rest of his group—whose location I didn’t inquire about since there was a taxi outside with the meter ticking. He didn’t want a ride—that was fine, no problem—but I didn’t plan to run up my bill by standing around talking either! Time to go!

I already had the package all packed up and addressed—I just needed postage for it which I quickly paid then dashed out the door waving goodbye to the other hiker.

I arrived back at the Mount Rogers Visitors Center several minutes later. Tim called it the “Top of the Hill” since that’s essentially where it was located. I paid the bill and gave him a few extra bucks as a tip then pulled my stuff out of the back.

Before I started hiking, I walked down to the Partnership Shelter where I left the food that the section hiker freaked out over two days earlier. It was still perfectly good food!

This time, the visitor center was open so I wandered in to look around a bit and bought some postcards before hitting the trail and leaving civilization behind.

The hike was largely uneventful. The weather was dry and pleasant. The terrain wasn’t particularly easy or difficult. The views were few and far between. All-in-all, a rather boring day of hiking. The most interesting part of the hike was passing an area that clearly used to have a shelter that was no more. The old privy was still there, camping was available and the old stairs for the shelter were still there, but the shelter was completely gone. It seemed odd for them to leave the stairs behind, though.

I met Hook and Franklin playing a game of Magic the Gathering. I don’t really know anything about this game except that it’s a card game, and I watched them play for a bit moving cards around and turning them sideways and I was amazed at how complicated it all looked. When I mentioned that, Hook said it took her quite a while to figure out how to play it. She was apparently losing at the time, but only because she kept talking about Franklin killing her and not having many options left. I had to take her word for it because I didn’t have a clue what was happening!

I stopped long enough to eat a quick snack and continued onwards. At this point, I knew the Four Horsemen were ahead of me and I wanted to catch up with them. I didn’t really expect to catch them today—they had signed the register in the last shelter so I knew they had camped there and figured that they were about a half-day ahead of me and a couple of long days, I’d catch up with them. (Blueberry made a comment to the effect of needing the Green Tortuga to “take the reigns” of the Four Horsemen—a pun that was not lost on me!)

An hour or so later, I reached a small stream where I found Disciple camping—another hiker I’d been seeing quite a bit of since a few days before Erwin. He was hanging a food bag from a tree when I arrived, and behind him, I saw… horsemen! I was a little astounded to realize that I had caught up with the Four Horsemen already! They must have had a super short day of hiking today!

Blueberry was the first to notice my arrival and exclaimed, “It’s Green Tortuga! Green Tortuga is here!”

I heard Heavyweight—I couldn’t see him from my vantage point, but I heard him, “Really? No… you’re making that up!”

And Blueberry insisting that it really was me. I said to Disciple that it sounds like some of them are doubting my presence over there and I was going to wander on to reveal myself.

The Four Horsemen seemed as surprised to see me as I was surprised to have caught up with them. They already had a campfire going and they told me of their shenanigans since I last saw them including that wonderful photo of three of them laying shirtless next to the “I heart Green Tortuga” message Amanda had written in chalk on the road.

I also heard another story of Blueberry breaking a tree—a full-sized tree while making this very campfire. When they find wood to burn, sometimes it’s kind of thick and difficult to break, but Blueberry being the physics major that he is, he doesn’t let that slow him down. No, he found a couple of trees growing close to each other and wedges the downed wood into it then breaks the log in half by pulling the end of the log across it. Leverage—it’s a powerful force!

Except he did this on a dead tree and the force actually broke off the top of the tree which tumbled 50 feet into the bushes next to Blueberry’s campsite. I’m not sure if he was impressed that he broke such a tall tree with his bare hands or relieved that the tumbling top missed him and his campsite.

There was also a solid 300-pound rock that wasn’t quite positioned at an optimal location from the firepit, so I watched the Four Horsemen create more levers and move the rock into a position that Blueberry liked better while I set up camp nearby. I hoped none of them would injure themselves moving that rock—it was a remarkably large one that I wouldn’t have even considered trying to move.

I had planned to hike further, but it was good catching up with the rest of the guys and I decided to call it quits for the day. Despite my unexpected stop, I still managed a 17.6 miles for the day. Not bad considering the late start I had got.

After they moved their rock and my camp was set up, I joined them around the fire and pulled out the surprise I had purchased in Marion specifically with them in mind. I just knew they’d be up for it: tattoos! At the grocery store, they had a sheet of those temporary fake tattoos with various sorts of 70’s peace and love symbols for a buck and I couldn’t resist. I bought it and figured I’d try to find the Four Horsemen on the trail to present it as a gift of sorts. I hadn’t expected to find them so quickly, but I wasn’t complaining!

They loved the idea and I pulled out the sheet and starting cutting the individual tattoos apart, and each of them chose two tats. Blueberry didn’t seem to quite know how they worked and tried to put one on his forehead, but it didn’t work because he had forgotten to take the plastic off the top of the tattoo first. Superman showed him how it was done, putting a musical note on each of his cheeks. (The cheeks on his face—not talking about butt cheeks here!) Bostrich went for one his forehead, and Blueberry wound up putting his second tat on his forehead as well. (When Blueberry asked how long it would last, we joked that it would last for a few months. The happy face on his forehead, we told him, might even still be there when he finished the trail.) Heavyweight, who already had real tattoos covering quite a bit of his torso, added them to the top of his arms near his shoulders.

For my part, I added one to the back of my right hand (the word “Groovy”) as a test. It had been years since I ever tried applying one of these tats and wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing before I committed to the one I really liked which I wanted to put on my neck because a neck tattoo seemed like a badass tattoo. I still regretted not putting the henna tattoo from Gatlinburg on my neck. I would fix that now! =)

I might not have formed the Four Horsemen—I didn’t even count myself as a Horseman, in fact—but now that we all had themed tattoos, I felt like I had finally joined a real trail gang. Don’t mess with us! We all have tats now! =)

Disciple joined us around the fire but passed on the tattoos. I joked with him, “Come on! Everyone else is doing it! You want to be cool, don’t you?” I laid down the peer pressure thick, overly so—not really meaning any of it. As far as peer pressure goes, though, temporary tats that would come off within a few days is a fairly tame thing to do. Despite our assurances that they really won’t last more than a few days, though, Disciple took a pass. His loss! =) I still had five or six of the tattoos left, though, so I’d just save them for another day. Maybe more people would want to join this trail gang later. Maybe I’ll just plaster myself with them out of boredom someday. Who knows?

But I’ll have them ready for when the times comes that I suddenly want or need a tattoo!

We chatted some more around the fire and after dark, we headed back to our sleeping bags and nodded off to sleep. It felt good being back on the trail after spending the better part of a week in hotel rooms. Which, admittedly, had its own perks, but it felt nice being back on the trail again.

The trail passed this old school house built in the 1800s—and a sign enticed hikers to enter for there would be trail magic inside.

So into the school I entered… It’s so cute, and I tell you, if it wasn’t so early in the day, I totally would have been willing to camp in here overnight just to say I camped in an 1800-era school house! Although I’m not sure if they’d lock the doors at night…

And, indeed, there was trail magic available. These ice cold Cokes really hit the spot on such a warm day!

The AT crossed another set of railroad tracks. (I’m not actually following the tracks—just looking down them as I crossed over them.)

I’d be passing under Interstate 81—the first of several times I’d be crossing this particular Interstate for hundreds of miles to come.

I’m not sure what created these holes. I often times see small lines of holes in trees that I usually assume were created by woodpeckers, but these holes are gigantic!

Most of the deer I’ve seen on the trail have been so shy, I could never get a decent photo of them. They were always too far away, but this is the first one I had been able to get a decent photo of. (Not that he seemed particularly happy to see me!)

The trail gang showing off their tattoos.

Okay, you can’t see the tats very well in that last photo, so here are some closeups. This is Blueberry with his “happy face” tattoo on his forehead. Originally he meant to put a butterfly tattoo there, but he applied it incorrectly and ended up using his second choice tattoo for his forehead instead.

Bostrich went with the peace symbol, also applied to the forehead.

Superman had notes on each cheek. You can’t really see it well in this photo, but the notes have the word “Peace” written in them.

Heavyweight applied his tats to his arms right under his shoulders. The temporary stats are the colorful ones. The dark, large ones next to the temporary tattoos are real tats, because Heavyweight is a real badass unlike the rest of us who are merely faking it. =)

I applied a tat to the back of my right hand and a second one to my neck.

Nothing tells the world that you’re a badass better than a tattoo on one’s neck, right? Right…?