sooo... this past week has been pretty decent to me. :) i FINALLY got out of the shenandoahs and i'm so glad for it. if i ever thru-hike again, i'm either going to aqua-blaze the shennies or find some good side trails and do them instead of the AT. i felt like all i saw in the shenandoahs was the road. we had to come out of the woods to even get good views for the most part. i'm hiking the trail to be out in the woods; i don't feel like it's wilderness if every half mile i hear a motorcycle start up and drive by. 

regardless, i had a really good time and met some awesome people in the shennies. i met a guy named will. he was a local that was just sectioning the shennies. he showed me a really cool blue-blazed rock scramble that went over the top of a mountain. and we had an awesome adventure that included trying to out-run a lightning storm and trying to find a campsite at the same time. right when we thought we'd found a nice clearing to pitch our tents in, we began to see headstones and realized we'd come across a cemetery. no thanks!!!! but it was getting dark, so we had to decide what we were going to do, so we hiked to the road and did another two-ish miles into a sure campground. fun times.

thennnn, the fourth of july takes the cake. :) that was the morning after we outran the storm, so we woke up at the campground and went to the restaurant for breakfast... i had a big cinnamon roll, a bacon, egg & cheese biscuit, and an awesome glass of water. we started hiking, but will had to leave the trail halfway through the day because he'd forgotten his wallet or something at the campground. so swayze and i hiked on by ourselves and met some other really cool people throughout the remainder of the day. 

we stopped at the skyland lodge to wait out a rainstorm. meanwhile, i called my daddy and my mama to wish them both a happy 4th of july  and i bought a bag of trail mix and a king size hershey bar. while we were sitting there, i met a retired marine whose name i can't recall right now, but i wrote it down in my book so i wouldn't completely forget. he referred to himself at a techie and let me charge my cell phone with one of his gadgets while he went inside and drank some coffee. he was really nice, and gave me two pieces of advice: i) get a marine hat. it'll make people question you. and ii) once dark sets, move your tent. it'll make people question your whereabouts. hahaha... i don't think i'll go through the trouble of moving my tent after dark, even if it IS free-standing, but bless his heart giving me the advice. :)

once the rain quit, we hiked on. right before we got to the pinnacle picnic grounds, i saw two men gathering firewood. even though the rain had quit by then, a really huge cloud of fog had blown in and the visibility had been reduced to crap. i couldn't see thirty feet in front of me; when we got into the area of the pavilion where they'd built a fire, i couldn't even see it. one of the men sent his wife over to ask if we were hungry, and when i told her that hikers are always hungry, she invited us for leftovers. :D everybody was SO awesome!! they fixed me a plate with steak and scalloped potatoes (side note: when i was little, i thought they were called 'scalped potatoes' and it always made me think of indians) and fried chicken and fresh tomatoes!! :) we sat there and talked by the fire for at least an hour while the rain started back up, and one guy told a really funny bat story that still makes me laugh when i think about it. right before they were ready to leave, the men were so amazing that they went into the woods and basically brought me back two whole trees  to use as firewood. we were so lucky that the rain AND the fog cleared right before 9:30ish, and we were able to walk over to the trees and see some of the fireworks in the city below!! :) 

once they left, we illegally camped out on the picnic table there at the grounds. there were three or four mice that i saw, so i had to rig up my backpack with a line that the mice couldn't get to. i was actually quite proud of myself for remembering that i had all the things that i needed to make the mouse line: my paracord, a coke can, and a tent stake. so i hung my pack from the line, and i laid out my tent footprint on the picnic table, inflated my sleeping pad, and then swayze and i climbed up and tried to go to sleep. that entire night's sleep was completely restless, though. the previous day, TWO people had reminded me that fifteen years ago, two women hikers were murdered less than three miles from where we were camping. so the entire night, every sound that i heard made me turn my head or open my eyes. plus, i was worried that a park ranger would come and write me a ticket for camping there. you're not supposed to camp anywhere within a quarter mile of park facilities. i was semi-concerned about bears coming for leftover food, but the main concern was creepers. which is funny, because i know that i'm statistically safer on the trail than i am in jackson, ms or north charleston, sc or even driving on any given road for that matter. 

but anyways. :) my time in the shennies was well-lived, and now i must go because someone has threatened to call animal control because swayze is out by herself in front of the library and it is "too hot" for a dog to be outside. some people need to keep their nose on their face and out of my business. some people make me laugh. guess i should go cool my dog off. ciao, friends! =)

blues and yellow... make miles?

so as of today, i'll sort of be considered a "yellow-blazer." which means that instead of following the white blazes of the trail, i'm going to skip a section of the trail and take the "yellow blazes" of the highway. i'm only going to skip eighty or so miles (roughly 3.5% of the trail), and i'm going to finish them when i get through hiking, so i guess when i get to katahdin, i won't "technically" be done, but what's 80 miles when you've walked 2,100? i've just definitely got the virginia blues. (it's not an actual, depressive state, mind you, so don't actually worry about me there.) between having to take zeroes for my foot to heal a while back and then just messin' around and taking unplanned zeroes, most of my hiking friends are four or five days ahead of me.

so my wonderful friend jennifer is gonna drive us north and do an overnight with us. we've been in the same general area for a bit now, and she came out and did a day hike with us at the beginning of last week. it was a really interesting day, haha... it started out awesome and sunny, then we got rained on, and then for the second time thus far in virginia, i was hailed on. then it cleared up but we could still hear thunder, and by the time we got to dragon's tooth, it was raining and thundering and lightning. dragon's tooth is a challenge in perfect conditions; coming down it in a thunderstorm with a dog was even harder. there was a section where the foot ledges coming down the rockface were only 4-5" wide, so i would have to inch out there, drop down three feet, call swayze out onto the ledge that i had just done, and then use her harness to basically guide her down to the ledge that i was currently standing on and hope that she'd stay there while i dropped down another three feet. but i really enjoyed it. :) i like rock scrambles. after walking in the woods all day, they're like miniature puzzles that you've gotta figure out.

even though i'm yellow blazing, i'm still thoroughly enjoying the trail thus far. i stopped the other day and talked to a park ranger for over an hour about the trail and the flowers and the trees and the butterflies. a really pretty black and white butterfly flew by and he informed me that it was a zebra swallowtail and that when you see a lot of butterflies gathered around a spot on the ground, they call those drinking clubs. and he told me that the really creepy owls that we hear at night are called bard owls. and we talked about a lot of other cool stuff... his name was mike donahue and he was awesome. and i'm still meeting a lot of really cool people. virginia's just so monotonous at times. it was really awesome, though, coming down to the water of the james river and walking across the footbridge. the footbridge across the james river is the longest foot-use only bridge on the AT and was donated by a guy and his wife with the last name of foot who hiked the trail a while back. their trail name was the happy feet. :)

we need to get on the road and get goin'. more updates later. :)

oh, and someone brought it to my attention that y'all can't comment on my posts now. i don't know how to fix that, but maybe i'll transfer this blog over to another blog soon. we'll see. until then, i've got facebook so you can leave comments on my wall or something. 

i spy with my two eyes... a bear!!

ok first of all i'm so excited cause one of my bestest friends just found out their little bun in the oven is gonna be a girl. congratulations times a billion to natalie and andrew. :)

so it took me over 500 miles, but i finally saw a bear! and four of them, nonetheless! a mama bear and her three cubs. swayze and i came around a corner and i think her tags alerted them to our presence. i wouldn't have known they were there had it not been for the fact that they made so much noise as they hauled butt up two tees. it was really cute... they were probably thirty or forty yards away (i'm not real sure... not good at distance) and two cubs went up one tree and the third cub went up another tree and the mama bear stayed at the ground keeping an eye on both trees. when they realized we weren't coming any closer, the lonely cub came down his tree and went over with his brothers and sisters, and the mama bear just sat there at the bottom of the tree and watched us. it's so crazy how fast they can climb! tip: if you're ever being chased by a bear, don't climb a tree. it won't get you away from them. it was a really neat experience seeing them. :)

i finally washed my hair last night after not having washed it for over 160 miles. i felt disgusting, and i washed it three times and took a 90-minute shower. i didn't think it was possible to run a hotel's hot water out, but if you have hair like i do, it's completely doable. i ran out of hot water halfway through and had to turn the water off and finish combing through my hair while i waited for the hot water to replenish itself. needless to say, it was one of the most glorious showers i've had in a very long time. the last time it took me that long to take a shower was back on spring break of 2006 when i'd spent an entire week on a dive boat in the bahamas without any conditioner. i have yet to do my laundry. it's sitting here in a bag beside me in the library... it's quite disgusting. i went to goodwill today and specifically bought a $6.50 outfit to wear while i do my laundry so i can wash every bit of clothing i have.

crazy man and i went to pizza plus last night and spent an hour and a half there eating. we both had two platefuls of salad and a pizza sub with chips and lots to drink. i'm eating so much. a few days ago, we hiked through an extremely dry section of trail. swayze was able to drink a little bit from streams that were almost dried up, but i hiked sixteen miles on less than 2 liters of water. on any given day, i drink at least four, if not five liters. thank God it was very windy and cool that day; otherwise, i think i would have been even more grumpy than i already was. anyways... there was a gas station/deli half a mile off the trail and all i could think about the last five or ten miles was a turkey and swiss sub, a bag of cheetos, a big glass of water, and a root beer float. when i got to the store, i ordered my turkey sandwich, bought the biggest bag of cheetos i could find, a 24 oz. sprite and when i was done with all of that, i went for another 24 oz. sprite, a pint of ice cream, and a root beer and made my own root beer float. :) it's crazy, but i've lost right at 20 pounds out here and i can eat whatever the heck i want. i will have to join a gym as soon as i set foot off the trail. no doubt about that. it doesn't come without downsides, though... suffice it to say, my waistline isn't the only thing that's gotten smaller. :( hahaha

i'm beginning to get worried that i won't reach katahdin on time. we're going to have to step up our pace. i've heard that there are days in the whites in new hampshire where five miles is a good day. the most we've done thus far has been 24, and that wore us out mentally as well as physically, mainly because we weren't prepared for it. i'd woken up that morning thinking we would do 14, but when we got to the hostel that we wanted to stay at, they were going to charge me $32 roundtrip to take us into town that was only 10 miles away, so i said, "screw it. i'll walk the ten miles." and we did. like i said... it wore us out, but i wasn't $32 in the hole like they thought i'd be.

i can easily see how people get the "virginia blues." all we do is walk in the woods and over rocks. in georgia and north carolina and tennessee, we'd climb a really big hill and have some grand view that made it all worth it. in virginia thus far, we just walk a lot and loodk at trees. granted, grayson highlands and white top were gorgeous... i know not everyday can be an albert mountain or a charlie's bunion, but hopefully virginia will give us a few more photo ops in the next stretch.

speaking of photos, i'm trying to get some on facebook. i've got roughly 80 up, but i've got over 1,000 pics on the camera and all the computers i've been on take forever to upload them. enjoy them as they come. :)

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

update! yay!

whew... where to even start?

i'm taking a zero today because i somehow hurt my right foot. i stepped on a rock right in the middle of my arch a few weeks ago and now it's hurting on top of my foot. i could hardly walk the other day and my foot's all swollen so i'm taking the day to overdose on vitamin i (ibuprofen), ice it, and rest it. zeroes make me so antsy sometimes, though, because i think to myself, "i should be out there hiking. i could be doing miles right now." except that right now, it's pouring down rain, so i'm glad i'm not out in it. 

i thought from the beginning that i would hate the smokeys. turns out, i only hated the stuff south of clingman's dome. my first day in the smokeys included a 17 mile hike out of fontana dam. there were hardly any views after the shuckstack tower and i never, ever thought i'd make it to the shelter that i'd planned on making it to. that first day in the smokeys was the first day that i had to pull my cell phone out and listen to music to get me in a better mood. everything north of clingman's dome was absolutely amazing. i tried ordering pizza from the newfound gap parking lot, but they wouldn't deliver. :( what kind of pizza place doesn't deliver 15 miles out? shame on them, haha.

i would have run out of food in the smokeys had it not been for a group of three hikers from florida that we met. they gave me four of their nature's valley oats 'n' honey bars and that lasted me until i got to standing bear. i walked out of the smokeys and the only food i had on me was an empty nutella jar, a box of hashbrowns, and one packet of instant coffee. everything was just so expensive at fontana! i couldn't justify spending that much money on food, so i didn't. i bought the bare necessities, but i guess i didn't get enough. they wanted $4.57 for a box of pop tarts!! anyways... i won't run out of food again.

i completed the smokeys in four days exactly, then made it to standing bear farm to wait on my cousin and pick up my dog. my cousin, cecelia, from alabama drove in and picked up our group (minus one) and drove us all to trail days. in the three and a half years that i lived in bristol, i never went to trail days in damascus. i never knew it was a set weekend (the weekend after mother's day) and by the time it rolled around, i was always working. it was SO MUCH FUN. there were drum circles every night and we went to a bar that had karoke the first night we were in town. hahahah... there was the token drunk local that was trying to dance with everybody, so i entertained him and then so did cecelia. it was awesome. there were so many vendors there and i finally got a sno-cone! i've been wanting a sno-cone for over a year... no one in charleston had them! so i got a pineapple one and shared it with swayze. then the hiker parade was on saturday and it was basically a big, huge water fight between the hikers and the locals. nick drove jolie over, too, and we had an awesome little visit. oh!! ANDDD we got to eat at the AYCE (all you can eat) shoney's breakfast buffet! i'd been dreaming about THAT for a few weeks, too. fresh fruit and french toast and biscuits and hashbrowns... mmmmm. :) ANDDD we stopped by starbucks and i got to see roxanne and she made me the most delicious frappuccino that i'd been thinking about for days on end while i was hiking... i'd been thinking about a half strawberry, half orange mango creme sweetened with coconut instead of classic and made with breve instead of whole milk for the longest time.

just as a side note... i originally figured that my food cravings on the trail would be mainly junk food for the fat and calories, but it's been completely the opposite. i crave fresh fruit in the mornings (especially oranges) and i think about ceasar salad like there's no tomorrow.

anyways, after the trail days weekend, cecelia came back and hiked with us until hot springs. it was really crappy weather the entire time. :( it was cold and rainy and we all got soaked. i woke up in the shelter one morning and it hadn't quit raining the entire night, so after i put on my rain jacket to go use the tree, i just started packing up. i didn't want to dry off and get back in my sleeping bag and take a zero at the shelter in the rain, so swayze and i hiked nonstop from the shelter into hot springs, nc. it was an 18-mile day and we did it in 6 hours. i stopped once for water because i'd run dry, but if we stopped at all, we almost got hypothermic because it was so cold. i felt so bad for swayze but we made it into town and stayed at elmer's and got warm and dry and had good meals and met great people. i tell y'all what... the hiking community is amazing.

i took a zero the next day in hot springs because the weather was still crappy and it was my cousin's last day in town. we went to the... well... the hot springs... that the town is famous for and spent an hour just hanging out in a hot tub. just what the hiker doctor ordered. :) i went to the post office and picked up a package that my friend aj had said would be waiting on me. it made me so happy to open a box and realize that i haven't been forgotten by the "real" world. i love hiking and i love the people that i've met, but i almost feel disconnected from my friends and family members because my cell phone is a piece of crap and doesn't work and i haven't gotten internet access nearly as often as i thought i would when i first started out. anyway... the salt 'n' vinegar chips and m&ms hit the spot, and the toilet paper made me giggle. :) and swayze loved her treats as well.

i also bit the bullet and bought a new pack in hot springs. the coleman pack that i got just didn't cut it. it was functional but not practical. it'd be alright for a weekend pack, but when you wear something for days on end, you want it to be comfortable, and it was killing my shoulders and was off balance. i love my new pack so much.

thank God i'm not on the trail right now... it was hailing here just now.

i guess i'll try and upload some pictures and see where that gets me. the shuttle leaves for the AYCE pizza & salad buffet in two hours and i'm not ABOUT to miss that. :) also, i am going to work on a finalized mail drop plan for the first half of the trip (up until harper's ferry, wv) today. it's just been really hard between not having any internet connection and not knowing my hiking pace and not having a cell phone to really update anything at all.

i miss y'all and love y'all a ton. keep the prayers comin' and i'll see y'all soon enough. :)