The main reason we didn’t push on last night was because rain was in the forecast for last night and today. I didn’t feel like packing up in the rain which it would most definitely had done if we had decided to camp. Since we stayed in a shelter, it held off. Everyone outside last night owes us a debt of gratitude and $10 each for the rain delay. And it was only a delay.
Bunny set the alarm for 6:30 and only snoozed once—she was serious about an early start. We only made coffee and ate a cold breakfast before hitting the trail at 7:30. This would have been a near record start for us if only Bunny would just stop imagining Wal-Mart parking lots wherever she looked. Not 15 minutes down the trail, we had to step off the white blazes so Bunny could brown blaze.
We caught up with Geo, Summit, and Bear Foot quickly thereafter. Being motivated by what we thought was a weed whacker (but turned out to be some very loud power lines) we found another way to get Bunny to move quickly down the trail. She will truly earn her name of Bunny before this trip is over. There was a sign in the trail saying trail magic ahead in the one room school house. As we got nearer, we saw a school marm step out and wave us in. When we got closer, we saw it was just Summit. This was one sweet setup. The local church had donated food, sodas, and various supplies a hiker might need and left it for everyone to take as needed. AND, they had two privies outback so I didn’t have to dig a hole—magic indeed.
The five miles to Interstate 81 flew by this morning. Bunny is feeling much better today plus she is motivated to beat the rain. We got to the parking lot of the first gas station right at 10. Geo, Summit, and Bear Foot were standing around trying to decide what to do first. We headed to the first gas station to scope out the ice cream and drink situation. I wasn’t happy with the selection and lack of iced tea, so we headed to the next station. Not much better there, but we got some ice cream and I got a Coke—I was going for an in the body float.
It started drizzling while we were eating so Pam turned off airplane mode on her phone to check the weather—all hell broke loose. She was getting calls and messages from back home. She tried calling back several people but couldn’t get through. Her mother finally called her back. Her mom had rushed her dad to the hospital last night thinking he might be having a stroke. They tentatively were able to rule that out, but they weren’t sure what was going on with him. He was in for more testing at the moment and they were hoping for some answers in a few hours. Pam called her kids and got them to head over to the hospital. We didn’t know what to do. We decided to hike on to the house we had rented for the night and call in when we got there. Hopefully, we’ll get some answers then and decide what we are going to do next. We were already planning to not hike tomorrow so we will have time to work out a plan.
There was still 12 miles of trail between us and the house. If the rain kept like it was, it would be a bearable walk—not pleasant, not miserable, but bearable. Of course things waited until we were 1,000’ higher to indicate what kind of afternoon we could expect. Miserable it was. Just as we got to the top of the ridge, the rain turned from drizzle to downpour and an electrical storm was unleashed just a few miles from us. As you may recall, Bunny doesn’t handle storms well.
List of items that make Bunny walk faster on the trail: 5) sound of tractor starting up at 5:30a when sleeping in a field illegally, 4) talking with strangers and walking, 3) spending days on end with an adulteress, 2) seeing me hurt and walking slow, and 1) thunderstorms. At one point, she grabbed my back and nearly threw me down to get ahead of me and off the mountain. She later claimed that she was just tugging on my pack cover to get my attention to let me know she was scared—whatever the case, I couldn’t catch up with her for the next two hours as she ran down the mountain. I did time it; the lightening was never closer than 3 miles and we were always in tall trees. The chance of a direct hit on us was slim. The chance of a tree getting struck by us and fall on us was not astronomical.
The average person has a better chance of winning an Oscar than getting struck by lightening. Bunny does not act and she definitely doesn’t have a singing voice so rule out all musical soundtrack categories as well. She was safe. This whole episode showed me three things about Bunny: 1) she has an irrational fear of storms (an already known fact which she continually tries to rationalize), 2) she can walk much faster than she normally does which means she routinely is dogging it (another known fact), and 3) if we were in real danger, my life means zero to her as she was probably a mile ahead of me most of the way down the mountain (also a known fact). So, no surprises at all in the given situation.
We made the 12 miles to the house in pretty decent time. We got there about 5:30 which means we hiked a little over 17 miles in a little over 8 hiking hours. We averaged a little over 2 mph. The only possible conclusion I can come to is that I have to unknowingly install blue tooth speakers in Bunny’s pack and play one of five possible sound tracks (stranger’s voices talking, tractor sounds, woman talking incessantly, the sound of me moaning in pain, or storm sounds) which I can select as needed to speed her up.
Everyone else was already at the house and showered. Bunny went in and showered while Berta (the hostel owner) waited on her. Berta then took her down to the bunkhouse so she could get WiFi access to call home and find out what was happening with her father. An hour later Bunny walked back in the house and said she was going home.
EFG