God is good! :)

i finally have a working cell phone, so i'll be able to update more and talk more and text more. not that i want to fill my days with talking and texting, but it's nice to be able to contact the world outside the woods every once in a while. :) 

my foot is getting better, but it still sucks sometimes. i'm icing it as often as possible and taking prescription-strength doses of ibuprofen at night... i can tell that the ibuprofen helps, so i try not to take it while i'm hiking 'cause i don't want to hike through the pain and make my foot worse than it already is... 

i stayed like three days in erwin, tn and took a short break there to help my foot heal a bit. we did a 20-mile slackpack day and swayze loved it. :) then we got to see brandon 'cause he came from johnson city to pick us up and take us to the trailhead! it's always really nice seeing familiar faces when you're out on the trail. 

i still haven't been able to get to a decent computer to upload all of my pictures... which i need to do soon because i've got almost 4gb worth of  pics on my camera and it says i've got less than 200 pictures to go before the memory's full. 

so i've decided to begin taking sundays as my zero or nero days. neros are where you take a "near zero" and hike a few miles but not as many as you would on a normal basis. i'm gonna try my best to start going to church every sunday. i went to church last sunday and it was the most awesome thing... i walked about half a mile and walked into the first church that i saw. everyone was really welcoming and i didn't feel out of place at all in my shorts, tshirt, and crocs. after church, i met a lady and she asked me if i would be interested in coming back with her to her house and having memorial day dinner with her and her family. i said yes and when we were walking out to her car, she was holding the hand of a little boy. she introduced him as her grandson willy and when i looked at him, he looked SO familiar. i asked her if by chance her daughter's name was keli, and when she said yes, we both looked astonished. this was willy bailey! i worked with keli at starbucks when i lived in bristol!!!! how crazy awesome is that?! so i went back to their house with them and we made pancakes and bacon and eggs and ate lunch, and then later that afternoon keli came over and we had bbq chicken and corn on the cob and cantaloupe and salad and other amazing foods. they dropped me back off at the place where i was tenting later that night, and i hiked out the next morning. 

then a few days later, i was reunited with a guy i'd met a few towns back and i finally got to meet his dog! sad thing, though, that his dog has since been pulled off the trail because of a bone spur. :( i also met back up with taylor, the slackpacker, and he invited me back to their RV for the night. i accepted that offer as well, and we watched "planes, trains, and automobiles" and ate dollar store pizza that night and it was amazing. i had the best breakfast the next morning of frosted mini-wheats and a banana and a cup of french-pressed coffee.... yum!!! 

i've noticed that i need to stop taking neros and zeroes... hahaha. it's just so awesome out here and everyone's so amazing that it's hard not to just sit back and relax and enjoy it all... when i got to a big lake the other day, i had full plans of hiking at least another ten miles, but there was an awesome shade tree that was calling our names, and we had to sit back and read a book and just lay in the shade for a few hours. the next day was our biggest mile yet... right at 23 miles. we hiked from 7a to 9p with a few long breaks in between. 

and as soon as we hiked into damascus, we ran into wendy! :) it was so awesome... we had hardly crossed the bridge to get into town and she stopped in the middle of the road and rolled her window down and we got in her car and she took us to the post office where i picked up the card that erin had sent us (thank you so much wendy and erin!! :)). thennnn she took us to the gas station and bought me a sobe and a little debbie and she took us to bella's off exit 19 and it was so much better than i hoped for!! then i went  home with wendy and got clean in a hot shower and slept in a super comfy bed and the next morning she dropped us off in damascus. 

saturday, my friend birch that i met out here introduced me to a set of locals that let me pitch my tent on their yard since the only place in town that would allow dogs wouldn't answer my phone call or their door bell. turns out that was good for my pocketbook, though, because it would have been $25/night and i can't do that. we got to see nick saturday afternoon and he brought me my new cell phone and we had lunch and awesome ice cream, and i got to see jolie and we had a good ol' time. then that night my hosts even let all the hikers come over to their house and i roasted my very first s'more on the trail! fun times for sure. 

sunday morning, i woke up and went to an outfitter to take a shower and then went and had coffee at a coffee shop. i brushed my teeth in their bathroom and then walked to church, where i met up with two other hikers that were there. the church was having a picnic that night and invited us over, and we went and we got to eat so much food and i even got to ride a horse! it was so much fun and i looked so redneck up on the horse in shorts and a tshirt and barefoot but i had a grin plastered on my face the whole time and it made the entire accidental zero completely worth it. the people out here make this experience absolutely, without a doubt, worth every minute of the time i spend sweating and in pain and struggling. :)

so to sum it all up, God is great and He's taking care of us out here by putting the appropriate people in our paths to make this journey easier on us. please keep praying and know that y'all are in my prayers as well. :) love y'all and miss y'all!! 

current trail things that i recommend:
filling your platypus with gatorade before you leave town
stopping and getting water whenever you can because you never know how crappy the next water source will be

mountain harbour bed & breakfast in roan mountain, tn

slackpacking as many miles as possible

bob's dairyland in roan mountain, tn

going to church and singing awesome songs

sitting in the shade on a hot day

staying with locals 

socializing

riding horses

bella's off exit 19 in abingdon, va

the community pool in damascus, va

having the time of your life