Deja Vu

Day 37
We woke up early and left the shelter as others were waking up and putting away their gear. We hiked over Little Hump Mountain and Hump Mountain which were a couple of large balds with great views. The weather was great and even though it was windy it was great to take in the mountain scenes every which way around us. We walked down the mountain to Doll Flats where the Appalachian Trail left North Carolina behind for good and continued a ways solely in Tennessee. Just before US 19, a couple set up a table of trail magic. We ate an oatmeal cream pie and I downed a soda quickly so we could spend some time in the town. We started walking down the road and were soon picked up. We climbed in the back of a pick-up truck and were whisked down the mountain road to Ole Country House, which was a little country diner with a bunch of country-style decorations and signs all around. Just to give you a taste: one sign read "This Matrimony Will Now Be Interrupted for Hunting Season," another read "Squirrels Will Attack Exposed Nuts" and another read "Two Things Every American Should Know How to Use . . ." followed by a picture of the Holy Bible crossed with a pistol and ". . . Neither of Which Are Taught in Schools." I had a burger with lettuce, tomatoes, ham, bacon, and coleslaw on top. It was real messy, but enjoyable. After lunch we walked over to the nearby Creative Grounds Coffee which was actually more of an antique shop and pizzeria than a coffee shop. I might have blogged there, but the wifi wasn't very strong. So we bought another trail dinner we needed at a little grocery store and as I was about to snap a photo of Nepsis by a statue of an elk a man ran up and offered to take a photo of both of us and drive us back to the Trail. I had hiked a portion of the Trail starting here almost six years ago with a dear friend. As I hiked some parts seemed familiar and some parts seemed different. I thought it was possible we had actually started somewhere else. A few miles down the Trail I remembered that we had forgot to fill up on water in town, but we soon passed a church that was listed in the guide book for water. So we filled up from the faucet on the side of the building. It was really hot as we walked on a pretty easy section and at one point Nepsis screamed behind me because she noticed a snake just off the trail. At the end of the hike we went alongside a big river and as we were about to pass a footbridge we noticed somebody had wrote 400 using sticks on the path. We looked in our guide book and discovered we were actually at mile 400.6 so we gathered more sticks and made the correction. The period was difficult to see. We walked on, past a waterfall just before the shelter. The shelter clued me in that I was indeed correct that this is where my friend and I started six years ago. Mountaineer Shelter was the first shelter I ever stayed at on the Appalachian Trail! It is distinct from other shelters because it actually has a little two-person loft as a third floor and a wood sculpture of a bear inside. After we came another thruhiker came in confused as to why some wrote 4006 on the path.     

Miles hiked today: 18 Total AT miles completed: 401.1 Total AT miles left to hike: 1784.2

Day 38

We had heard that it was supposed to rain all day so when we woke up I expected everything to be wet. It wasn't. It didn't even look like it was going to rain anytime soon. The terrain all day was just a lot of little ups and downs, no big climbs or descents. It started to sprinkle in the late morning and all at once it started to rain. We put on our ponchos and in five minutes the rain stopped so we took them off again. We stopped to eat lunch under a shelter and the rain fell again, fast and hard. It stopped again just as we were finishing up eating. As we continued on, the dark clouds rolled above us. All day the small rain clouds passed overhead, threatening rain, interepted by blue patches of sky. We heard one crack of thunder. The rain started coming and we ran dowm the trail to get out from under the gray cloud. We managed to stay fairly dry all day. We hiked down, off the mountain and turned right at the road to the Black Bear Resort. To the left was another cheaper hostel, but it didn't have food for resupply. We're glad we didn't go there because everyone we met who had stayed there except one hiker got violently sick. At our hostel, we were surprised to see J-walk and Willy Wonka who we thought were far ahead of us. They told us they had been at the hostel for several days. J-walk was waiting for his dog to be delivered so he could hike with her and Willy Wonka had to go to a doctor who said she had ruptured a tendon in her foot. She was hiking too fast, especially downhill and feared she'd have to get off the Trail. At the hostel we showered, did laundry, resupplied, ate lots of food including two frozen pizzas and hung out with the other hikers there. I was going to blog, but instead watched The Shawshank Redemption and Dumb and Dumber in a little hiker lounge. It felt really good just to rest like that before going to sleep late for a thruhiker.

Miles hiked today: 15.9 Total AT miles completed: 417 Total miles left to hike: 1768.3

Day 39

We left the hostel in the morning after a hot night. Within a few miles we were surrounded by large rock faces, like walking through a non-desert canyon. Then we headed down rocks to a river and the magnificent Laurel Falls. In order to get good pictures, I slipped and soaked my feet in the river. So be thankful! After walking along the river and crossing several bridges we climbed up Pond Mountain which was very tough going. After we came back down we had lunch at the Watauga Lake beach and proceeded around it, across the dam, and back up into the mountains to Vandeventer Shelter. The view from this shelter is one that greatly inspired me six years ago. The water source was very far away downhill and it took a very long time to retrieve it and bring it back up the long climb.

Miles hiked today: 17.5 Total AT miles completed: 434.5 Total AT miles left to hike: 1750.8

Day 40

We hiked. We ate lunch at a monument to a hermit who lived there forty-five years. We hiked to a road where a man gave us water and crackers. We hiked on to the shelter we intended to stay at, but it was still pretty early and those ahead of us had also moved ahead, so we did too. We hiked on and tired ourselves out, but kept on. Just after another road a church left a box of sodas. We downed one for the caffeine and pushed through the last couple of miles to Abingdon Gap Shelter. This was our new record for mileage.

Miles hiked today: 22.7 Total AT miles completed: 457.2 Total AT miles left to hike: 1728.1

Day 41: Part I

We woke up early and packed up quickly in anticipation of making it to Damascus just over the border of Virginia before the projected big storm hit. We hiked fast, but were still caught in small pockets of rain. At long last we made it to the Virginia border! Some parts of the Trail that I remembered from six years back were missing so the Trail must have been relocated in parts. Other places I definitely passed were different than I remembered, revealing that the mind fills in the gaps of our memories with things that are completely untrue. This is another reason why we shouldn't feel like we know any kind of truth so absolutely.