The best of plans often change. It started raining pretty hard around 4 a, but we didn’t care. We were warm and dry in our slanted shelter. I was having a crappy night for another reason. No, Bunny wasn’t up to her usual pad/sleeping bag hogging antics. It was much worse. The sleeping pad “tubes” were coming unglued so I was sleeping on a bulging ridge in the middle of my side (Bunny was generous enough to grab the good side). All night long, I either rolled towards Bunny and got an elbow, or towards Patches and got a knee. I tried sleeping on top of the ridge but just kept dreaming of the theme to “the Jeffersons”—it took a whole lot of trying, just to get up that hill. Add in the slide to the back of the shelter and pulling myself back towards the front and I didn’t get a lot of solid sleep.
We took off the same time Patches did, but I insisted upon back-tracking up the same trail we came into the shelter on so we wouldn’t miss any of the official trail. My reasoning was that if they wanted the trail to run by the shelter, they would have white blazed past it. Perhaps, just perhaps, I might have some OCD issues. By the time we got around to the other end of the trail, Hot Legs, Madlib, Aleia, and Zulu caught us and passed us. Patches was already climbing the hill on the other side of the gap and we lost sight of her.
By the time we progressed all the way to the road, a whopping 0.1 mile, a guy in an SUV pulled up and offered us a ride to town and a night’s stay at his hostel with the promise of a return ride to our location in the morning. Since it was raining steadily, we quickly agreed, but Patches was already too far gone to catch. We got Zen to agree to go back and pick her up when she finished the 4 miles we all had planned to do. Bottom line, we were in town and showering by 9 while Patches was hiking.
Aleia is the only one of us who hasn’t gotten trail magic and her luck held again today. As we passed Winding Stair Gap, where we had planned to hike to, we saw Fresh Grounds’ car. He is set up providing magic for hikers in our area once again. We should be able to get some from him tomorrow since we know where he is. Aleia will miss it again because she is leaving the trail for a few days to visit a grad school in California.
Today, we showered, did laundry, shopped for more gear (we had to get new sleeping pads because I refuse to “hump” it another night. Arnie 1 Mile agreed to drive us to the outfitter and then to an AYCE Chinese/Sushi Buffet. While we were showering and blogging, Zen went and picked up Patches who had found Fresh Grounds and partook of 3 (count them, three) cheeseburgers and French fries before getting to the
hostel. After she showered, she came along with us to the buffet and made a nice dent in the sushi bar. We’ll find out how safe that turns out to be later tonight. After supper, we headed to the armpit of America (aka Wal-Mart) to get enough supplies to last until Pam and Joyce join us next weekend.
We are all set to be dropped back where we were picked up this morning. We will resume hiking around 8 in the morning in what should be our earliest start to date made all the more possible knowing that we will get some free food after less than 4 miles of walking. Life is good.
EFG
I’ve been to three eagles with my son, to redo his missiing 80 miles from the fires of 2016 when is soboed – great place-hike on
Lots of fire damage all around the trail here. It’s kind of scary to imagine the fires raging.