homeward bound!

this will be my last journal entry for quite a while... i decided yesterday, in the midst of a particularly crappy day, that i would end my hike for this year. when i decided last week that we would skip new hampshire and vermont this year, i figured that we would get down to mass and pull consecutive twenty-mile days and be done with our hike in less than two weeks. well... our first full day in mass, we did pull twenty miles. it wasn't too hard, but by the end of that night, i was absolutely exhausted. my feet hurt and i misread my map and i walked a few tenths of a mile in the wrong direction, but there was a completely awesome end to the day in that we stayed at tom levardi's house and he made me the best ice cream sundae ever, complete with fresh peach cubes.

the next day, we had planned on staying at upper goose pond cabin, a pretty nice shelter on the trail, famous for its view, fireplace, and the pancakes that are often served each morning if there is a caretaker on duty. ugp is another 20-mile day from dalton, and we didn't get out of town until at least ten that morning. we had only made it a little over halfway when i decided to stop for the day so i'd have a little bit of sunshine left to cook and wash dishes with. it was pretty disappointing to not be able to pull two twenties in a row, but that night, i looked at my guidebook and planned for a 22-mile day the next day, figuring that we'd balance the big and little days out. 

yesterday dawned and we were out of camp by 730 or so, and things just didn't go as i thought or hoped they would. by 10, we had only done six  r seven miles, which was pretty disappointing. we stopped at a really pretty stream to get more water, clean up, grab a snack, etc. when i grabbed my aqua-mira out of my pack, i noticed that the bottle that part b was in had cracked, and i had no second part to my water purification system. basically, it was useless. i hate aqua-mira and won't ever purchase another set. i will forever stand behind msr's sweetwater drops. <3 so from that point on, if i wanted any water that i didn't feel 100% safe in drinking (such as from a spring, right out of a rock), i was going to have to boil every drop of it. which would have gotten to be quite a pain, considering i drink upwards of 3L a day.

i also discovered during our little break by the stream that my mosquito repellent had run dry. i got one final application out of the bottle, and three hours later, i had sweated off the 100% deet that i had applied and was being eaten alive. the next town with any sort of store was at least two days away, and it was five miles off the trail, which would mean taking an entire day to go walk to get bug spray, or hitching a ride, which i still haven't done and don't feel comfortable doing. 

so yesterday, i stopped on a bridge in the middle of the trail where the moquitoes couldn't get me, and i sat down and had a good cry. i pulled out my guide book and figured that if i bailed out in mass, i could just rent a car and drive down to virginia to pick up the 80 miles that i have left to do there, and then continue south to home. too bad car rentals don't do one-ways out of state?! what the heck?! i called enterprise and they were no use. basically, i was stuck where i was. so i cried some more. then i remembered that some good friends of mine from bristol were visiting their family in maine, and that they were due to drive back south soon. i called them, and it turns out that they are driving back tomorrow. perfect! i bailed off the trail, and i'm getting a shuttle to eastern mass tomorrow morning, and then i'll be bristol bound for some pumpkin soup and awesome friends, and then mississippi bound for catfish and awesome friends! =D

it turns out that yesterday, i was just PMSing. that may be a little bit too much information for y'all, but everything seems 10, and even 100, times worse when you're PMSing. maybe i blew everything out of proportion, but i missed everybody, i was tired, i was hurting, and i was annoyed as hell at the thought of having to boil my water and be a mosquito buffet. i can hike if i have to boil my water. i can hike with bugs. i can even hike through pain (i've done enough of that), but put it all together, and it just gets to be too much sometimes. i didn't come into hiking the AT with the thought that everything would be puppies and kittens and sunshine, but if i'm not enjoying myself, if i'm hating the thing that i'm out here doing, then it's time for me to do something else. 

i saw something painted on a wall in a sandwich shop the other day. it read, "the worst experience is not defeat, but regret." i may not have finished all 2,181 miles of the appalachian trail this year, in one go-round, but i do not regret a single step that i have made on this journey. i don't feel defeated: i will just come back next year and finish what i have not completed. i don't regret stepping off that trail yesterday. it felt wonderful to be able to buy full bottles of actual shampoo and conditioner last night in the grocery store and know that i will be able to keep both bottles after i'd used them once, instead of having to throw them in the hiker box because they're too heavy to carry. i know i will have a hard time adjusting back to the "real world," but some of those things will be welcome.

all in all, i am super thankful for all of my time out here. God has been wonderful to me, y'all have been wonderful to me, and i wouldn't trade these last five months for the world, even if it meant finishing the entire thing in one attempt. sometimes, you have to learn that not completing things doesn't mean you've failed at them. i will take these +/- 1,700 miles proudly. i have met too many people out here that have told me, "you're hiking the whole thing?! alone?! i could never do that!" i also saw painted on a wall the other day, "those that say things are impossible deem them so." 

you can only do what you put your mind to, and next year, i'll put my mind to ~481 miles in the northeast. :)

yesterday around lunch, after i posted my latest entry, swayze and i loaded into janet's (the owner of one of the most awesome campgrounds in the world) van and she drove us to pinkham notch, roughly 15 miles down the road. our plan was to get dropped off at pinkham and then hike northbound back into gorham by today and then wait out the really crappy weather that's going to hit the northeast tomorrow. there was about 20 trail miles we'd have to hike and that section included wildcat mountain, which has i believe four peaks we'd have to summit. we made it a tad bit over one mile into our hike when i decided to bail off the mountain. the first mile was pretty much flat and in that distance, swayze had already thrown a shoe at least six times. i had tried the vetrap and once she started losing her shoes, i even tried the baby socks and gorilla tape and nothing seemed to be working.

so i came to the conclusion, sitting on one of the rock stairs at the base of wildcat mountain, that she would not be able to hike the white mountains of new hampshire. if she can't keep her shoes on, she can't keep her toenails intact. and if her toenails can't stay in shape, she can't hike. i don't have time to fiddle fart around with this brand and that brand of shoes, as far as ordering her a few more pairs and waiting on them to come in and then doing test runs up the mountains. i did some more research last night and i found a few more brands that might work, but as far as ruffwear brand dog boots, caveat emptor.

i have decided that i am going to skip both new hampshire AND vermont this year and come back next year and hike them with my cousin. perhaps by that time, i will have found a pair of boots that will actually do their job and stay on and swayze will either be able to come with me, or maybe i can find a babysitter for a month or two while i complete the trail. so i guess, sadly, i'm not a thru-hiker anymore? =( i suppose i have become a lasher, or long ass section hiker. sometime this week, i am going to either rent a car or find a ride down to massachusetts and complete mass, ct, ny, and my sections in jersey (13 miles), pa (30 miles), and va (80 miles) that i have skipped. all that i will lack after that will be the 3 miles in maine that i didn't get to before we had to bail off the trail last weekend, the 163 miles of nh, and the 150 miles of vt for a total of 316 miles for next year. that'll mean that we'll have done 1,865 miles this year. i will definitely be sad by the fact that i won't get my "2000-miler" this year. but you gotta do whatcha gotta do, and if my dog can't hike, then i can't either.

but we still have hundreds of miles of adventure left, boys and girls, so hang on to your hats and stay along for the ride!

variables in my new plan a

so i have a very flexible new plan a. swayze and i have been in gorham, nh for the last week waiting for her feet to heal up, relaxing, and gearing up for some damned cold weather. we were planning on hiking a few days ago, but i used that day to walk into town and sort of shop for cold weather gear and whatnot. i swear my clothes bag almost weighs as much as my food bag!

anyways, as i was walking into town that day, a friend that i'd met up here adn the owner of the campground i've been staying at drove by me and pulled over on the side of the road. they said they were going to drive up to mt. washington and wanted to know if i wannted to tag along. eager to scope out the territory that i will soon be hiking, i hopped in the backseat and off we went. however, when we got to the base of the mountain, the park employees informed us that the mountain was closed on top because of inclement weather conditions but that we could still drive halfway up.

the guy who was driving has an altimeter in his car that came out of an old airplane. mt. washington's peak sits at 6,288 feet, the second highest on the entire AT. i've already climbed the highest peak of the AT, so mt. washington should be no big deal, right? wrong. mt. washington boasts that it is the home of the world's worst weather. back in the 1930s, a wind speed of 231 mph was recorded atop mt. washington and held the world record until recently. so by the time we got to roughly 4,200' the other day, the temp was 37 degrees and a ~40 mph wind was hurling snowflakes through the air. i also got the first taste of what rime ice is. google it if you don't know what it is... it's rreally pretty, but i do plan on hiking today so i don't have time to fully explain it. we parked the car in a small parking lot when we got as high as we could and got out of the car. bob forewarned me to hold onto the car door while i opened it because the winds wrre so strong. we lasted maybe five minutes out in that weather. i tried to get my picture taken in the first snow that i've experienced on the AT, but i couldn't hold my eyes open long enough because the snow stung so badly. i lost my balance a few times trying to navigate the few rocks that were on the ground while dealing withthe wind. i've never had to lean into the wind to remain upright. it was quite intimidating.

which i suppose is why i've stayed so long in gorham... it was completely FUN being out in that kind of weather knowing there was the safety and comfort of a car available. but the idea of hikig in those kind of winds scares me. hiking mt. washington will mean i will be above treeline for miles and miles... hours of exposed, windy hiking. i have been checking the weather on mt. washington's website continually since our little escapade and the wind chill hasn't risen above freezing.

if y'all can do anything right now, please pray for an indian summer for new hampshire. i am super worried about having to hike in these conditions. i'm gon' be prayin' like never before these next 50 miles. just pray for good weather, please. :) love y'all and hope to see y'all soon!!

i heart wrenches.

i am currently writing (typing?) from the state of new hampshire!

we have been here in gorham for the last three days, and it's a wonderful little town. there's even a mcdonald's... i haven't seen one of those since millinocket! (not that i'm complaining... it's kind of nice to be so remote at times.) we're taking a break to let swayze's toenails heal up again. :( the granite rock here in maine just SUCKS. she feels fine and wants to play, but every time she starts to run around, her toenails open back up again and her feet start bleeding. i've been keeping her on pain meds and trying to keep her as still as possible. i bought her a rawhide this morning to keep her entertained while she's having her "down time."

i don't know how we're going to solve this problem. i bought her a full set of dog boots and we're having problems with them staying on, so i bought a roll of gorilla tape this morning at wal-mart that will hopefully help. i ran into guiness, a hiker who's got her dog with her as well, the other day on the mountain and she told me that she uses baby socks to help protect her dog's feet, so i'm going to combine the baby sock idea with the dog boots in hopes that the socks will help give the boots something to "grip" to and will keep them on. and by golly, if that doesn't work, i'll just superglue the boots to swayze's feet. :)

i seriously hope it doesn't come to this, but i may have to either send her home or just pull off the trail myself. i would hate to end my journey this close to being done, but if she can't hike, i can't either. =?

other happenings include seeing a moose in the wild, falling down a mountain, feeding feral chipmunks, and completing mahooSUCK notch. :) the moose that i saw was a really big bull moose and it was cool as heck seeing him on the trail. i didn't take a picture because moose tend to blend into pictures, so i just sat there and enjoyed the moment. when i went to move on my way, i startled him and since moose are pretty dumb, the only way he knew to escape was to retrace the route that he'd taken to get to where he was. too bad i was standing right where he'd come from! so here's this umpteen-hundred pound moose running right for me. my eyes got really huge and my heart stopped and my brain stopped and i was thinking, "omg omg omg what do i do? what do i do?" but my legs wouldn't work and i'm not sure i would have ran even if they would have. luckily, when he was about fifteen yards away, he turned north and headed down the AT in the opposite direction. i had to make myself breathe once i couldn't see him anymore and i laughed out loud because of how absolutely scary the situation had been.

falling down the mountain was rough. i've still got a pretty decent set of scrapes and scratches to show off that will probably stay with me for another week or so. i was coming down baldplate mountain the morning after it rained the whole day prior, and i knew it was still slick, so i was trying to be as careful as i could be. but i still managed to stumble over who knows what, and it was a fall that i thought i could run and catch myself on, but i didn't catch myself. so i kept running downhill on this slick rockface. when i realized i was not in a good situation, i yelled out a four-letter word and tried grabbing hold of a charlie brown christmas tree, but it wasn't big enough to stop me. so my brain told me that i should probably wipe myself out before the mountain did the job for me, so i sat on my left side and slid about ten feet and my hiking poles went in opposite directions and i had a big crybaby fit, mainly because i scared myself more than anything. my ankle was the size of a golfball immediately after my fall, so i went into town that night and RICEd (rest, ice, elevation, compression) it and now it's perfect. good. as. new.

i've also decided that the true spelling of the mahoosuc notch should include a K, to be correctly spelled as mahoosucK. it took us SIX HOURS to go one mile in the notch. it specificially says in my guide book that mahoosuc notch is the hardest and/or most fun mile of the AT. there's no and/or about it. it's the hardest and my fun ended about fifteen minutes into it. i kept having to lift swayze up and put her on top of boulders and then take my pack off and go back and help her and help her down a four-foot drop and then lift her up again. this went on and on and on and on. i never thought we would be done. the only good thing about being done with mahoosuc notch is that i've been told by everybody that's hiking with a canine companion that the notch is THE hardest section of the trail when you've got a dog with you. so we have overcome the hardest section in the 2,181 miles. yay us.

oh! anddd... the entire state of vermont is closed due to irene. i won't be able to hike it, so that'll cut out 150 miles of my trip. my thought about vermont is to skip it this year and come back and maybe hike it with my cousin when she thru-hikes next year. :) technically, we'll still be able to be "thru-hikers" since it's not our fault that we can't do that section of the trail. the ATC says so.

so those are my wrenches: swayze and vermont. i love new plan As! 

ah, hiking...

so irene didn't blow us away! we rode out the "storm" with taylor and carolyn in the rv and had a grand ol' time. granted, it rained a lot that day and the wind blew us around a bit, but it wasn't anything horrible. we watched a few movies and played a few games of phase 10 (a pretty fun card game, btw). the day that dawned after irene came through was absolutely gorgeous: hardly a cloud in the sky, sunshiney, and a breeze blew constantly to keep it at a perfect temperature... it even got kind of chilly later on that afternoon.

when taylor drove us back to the trailhead on tuesday, we learned that irene had flooded two rivers pretty close to the trail and one of the rivers had actually washed out two bridges that we had to cross to get back to the point where i was picked up. instead of asking him to take the seventy-plus mile detour, he dropped me off at the base of sugarloaf mountain. it was actually pretty interesting how things panned out from there... there's a ski resort on sugarloaf, and the only way to get to the AT from where he dropped me off was to hike up the ski slope. it was a pretty steep climb in parts: the peak of sugarloaf mountain is one of the highest peaks in maine, second only to mount katahdin, which we climbed a few weeks ago. definitely huffed and puffed to get up that one.

irene didn't have as much of an impact on the trail as i'd imagined she would, but there were a lot of blowdowns (fallen trees) just south of the spaulding mountain shelter. the northbounders were calling it "the mahoosuc notch of blowdowns." mahoosuc notch is known as the slowest mile on the AT because it's basically negotiating your way over, around, and through huge boulders. there have been stories of moose (i still think the plural of this should be mooses) falling into the notch and breaking their legs and, obviously, not being able to get out. sort of speaking of which, we saw a moose skeleton of the trail a week or so back. it was kinda creepy. anyways, swayze and i have mahoosuc notch coming up here pretty soon. i'm looking forward to it, but i know it'll be rough. i met two NOBOs yesterday with their dogs that said mahoosuc notch was harder than the whites for them. we'll see how it goes.

on the bright side of things, i'm running into a lot of my friends that i met down south now! it's kind of weird to think that if i hadn't taken so many 0s, i'd be close to finishing right now. granted, swayze does slow me down a lot, but i still don't think my hiking pace rivals those that i've been seeing these days. i ran back into spice boy, walking home, whistler, and so far... all of those guys, i hadn't seen since damascus. i also ran into moses this morning at a bagel shop here in town. it's so nice seeing familar faces, but it's so bittersweet because you know you'll probably never see these people again. i love the trail family, though. :)

that's really all for now... please keep us in your thoughts and prayers! i heard the temperature up on mount washington a week or so ago was in the upper 30s with a wind chill of 27. that's way too cold for me, so i'ma pray that i get a really nice, good weather week for the whites. once we've got southern maine and the whites out of the way, i won't say the AT will again be a breeze, but i will be able to breathe a huge sigh of relief in knowing that we've done the hardest section of the trail. :)

i miss all of my friends and family back home (all of my homes, btw... you bristolians and charlestonians included) so much! i finally got to talk to natalie, who is expecting her first baby in mid-november. i'm going to really try to be done with the trail in time for her baby shower in mid-october. and i'm looking forward to being home with everybody for mine and my mama's birthdays. love y'all and miss y'all! i want some catfish, dangit! <3

i'm still very much in maine. i finally broke down and ordered swayze a pair of dog boots in hopes of helping with her toenail issue. we picked them up from the post office this morning and then went on a 12-mile hike that wound up testing my nerves a little bit. she kept kicking them off and wanting to lay down instead of hike. she eventually got the hang of it with her front boots, but her back boots are too big and kept falling off on their own. i'm gonna call ruffwear tomorrow morning and see if they won't replace her two back shoes with a smaller size. God bless taylor and carolyn... i've been staying with them in their rv for the past five nights or so while i was waiting for the delivery of the boots. tomorrow morning, they'll drive me back to the trailhead and i'll take the ferry across the kennebec river and we'll hike into stratton, where we'll more than likely get picked up for another stay in the rv while we wait on irene to blow through. she's supposed to hit us sunday night/monday morning and in lieu of spending money for a hotel or taking a zero out on the trail (because the forecast for mon is a high of 65 with an 80% chance of heavy rain), taylor offered us another stay with them. :)

there has been quite a bit of bad news this week on the AT. two hikers have died and while both of their deaths bring sadness, one brings about a particular sense of uneasiness and concern. the first hiker's name was open mike and he was found up here in maine not far from where i'll be hiking in the next couple of days. the original theory of his death was that he fell and hit his head on a rock, but then the autopsy showed that he suffered a heart attack, which then led to him falling and hitting his head. he was hiking alone and no one found him in time. the other hiker to pass is a much sadder story. his name was stonewall and i met him roughly nine miles south of harpers ferry, west virginia. he was sitting on the trail rolling a cigarette and, as is usual when two hikers pass each other, we began talking. he was a southbounder and he loved the civil war; that's how he got his trail name. he said his pack was around 60# and that he wanted a pack that heavy to sort of experience what the soldiers in the civil war experienced. we didn't talk long... maybe ten or fifteen minutes. i gave him my aqua-mira (water purification chemicals) because he said he didn't have any purification method and i was going into town that day so i could get some more. we parted ways, and i learned this week that he is dead and the circumstances surrounding his death have been deemed suspicious and the FBI is investigating this case. he was found somewhere in virginia around roanoke. i heard through the grapevine that he was found half-buried. someone from the appalachian trail conservancy contacted me via facebook the other day because i commented on their link that they posted and they requested that i call the FBI and give them any information regarding stonewall. i can't really tell them much of anything, but calling them is on my to-do list before i hit the trail tomorrow morning. it's just so sad... it's one thing to die doing something you love because of natural causes or because of the inherent risks of the certain activity; it's a completely different thing to have your amazing adventure ended because of something that has nothing to do with you. both hikers died doing something they loved, but i almost feel like open mike's case is a cause for rejoicing, whereas thinking about stonewall brings tears to my eyes. it's so weird to feel the way i do because i only talked to him so briefly, but i find myself thinking as i hike now, "what if you'd just talked to him for ten more minutes? what if you hadn't been in such a rush to get to the post office for that mail drop?" thirty seconds can be the difference between being in the right place at the right time and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. these days, i try and not rush through my meetings on the trail. i hope and pray he his brought justice.

there's really not much else going on... i am almost through the mid-maine section, which means that my new england climbs are about to get serious. i talked to spice boy briefly last night via text. he went over mount washington yesterday and the actual temp was 38 with a wind chill factor of 28ish. what. the. heck. i can't wait to get out of the cold weather area. give this girl some heat! oh... and also let me see a moose.

swayze and i hiked out of the 100-mile wilderness today and we still haven't seen a moose! we're 115 miles into our hike in maine, and it's been every high and low imaginable. the climb up katahdin was amazing... when we got to maine, the weather was really crappy, so we waited two days so that we could hike in good, warm, sunshiney weather. if i couldn't finish on katahdin, i was going to have sunshine for it, by golly! the climb was awesome... it was an entire-body workout and i could hardly roll out of bed the next morning. there were parts where you had to lift your foot up to your chest and plant it in a rock and pull yourself up on the ledge above your head and there were parts where if you weren't careful, you could have fallen off the mountain and died. the views were 100% amazing and i kept thinking to myself, "what's this mississippi girl doin' all the way up here in maine?" i cried when we hit the top... it's just such an emotional high! the only "downside" to our hike up to katahdin was the fact that by the time we got to the summit, there were at least 30, if not 50, day hikers up there and it was completely crowded. taylor and i both got our pictures by the sign, but all the groups were being so loud. i really wish people would treat katahdin like a library. i wanted to yell, "could y'all please be quiet? i'm trying to have a moment here!" :) if anybody's reading this that hasn't done katahdin yet, i've got two suggestions: get up EARLY, as soon as they post the weather forecast, and hike before the day hikers even wake up, and don't bother with your poles. i didn't use them at all... you can't, really, except on the tableland, but it's flat enough that you don't need them. 

the 100-mile wilderness was... sigh. long. i didn't realize how much "out of shape" i was for that kind of hiking... i think flipping from jersey kind of screwed me for making decent mileage. the last couple of hundred miles that i hiked before i flipped were relatively flat... va, md, pa, nj... with the exception of va, i don't think any of those states have peaks above 2,500', much less the 5,000'+ peak that katahdin is. they tell you to pack in 8-10 days' worth of food for the wilderness, and i took six and a half days' worth. it wasn't enough. i didn't sleep well two nights in a row, so trying to hike when i was pretty worn out wasn't a very good idea, but i didn't have enough food on me, either. the weather was pretty decent the first couple of days in, but a few days ago, rain was forecast with at least a 60% chance, and all i ate that day was probably 400 cals worth of granola for breakfast, then a pack of ritz cheese crackers when i realized my granola wasn't going to get me up the mountain. it started sprinkling around lunchtime, so when we got to a shelter on top of a mountain, i decided swayze and i were going to take a nap and catch up on our sleep and warm up (it's already cold up here!!). we didn't move for the next eighteen hours; we stayed in our sleeping bag until the next morning. that night, i rationed out my food and ate a nature's valley granola bar. my reasoning was that if i didn't hike much that day, i didn't need a lot of food... i ate less than 1,000 calories that day. good thing, too, because all that food i saved myself from eating then really helped me through the 15 miles we did today to get out of the wilderness. it's just really weird how i've been out here for so long, and i'm still not good with figuring out what to eat and when to eat it and how much of it to eat. i honestly thought i had enough food with me when i walked into the woods... and maybe i guess i did, had they been new jersey woods. but they were maine woods. and maine woods are different. 

maine has been good and bad and everything in between already. it's been gorgeous and sunny, but we've gotten a lot of rain, too. and rain makes things so slick and slippery. i've fallen countless times on wet, mossy rock and broken both of my hiking poles that i found on the trail in hot springs! my first register entry in maine (other than the one at katahdin) said, "maine is the place where poles go to die." there are even bogs up here where you can sink pretty deep in some pretty mucky, unrecognizable stuff. they try to place big logs across the bogs that you can step on, but all the moisture in the air eventually weakens the boards over time and they can break. and then you step on them, and they're not as sturdy as they look, and then your foot gets covered  in nasty black stuff. factor in the rain and the cold and muddy feet and slipping and falling into the mix, and it can put you in a pretty foul mood. but the views make up for it when they're there. 

and swayze is beginning to have trouble with her feet. she was absolutely fine in pennsylvania on the rocks, but these rock scrambles in maine have gotten the better of her. thank God it happened today and not three days into the wilderness, but i noticed that two of her toenails have gotten so short that they've started bleeding. her pads are fine; it's just her toenails. :( i don't know what to do about it, so i opened a forum discussion on whiteblaze, where hopefully i'll find some answers here in the next day or two. if anyone reading this has any recommendation, i'm more than open to them. i don't want to have to resort to buying those $65 dog boots because with one misstep into a bog, it could suck them off her feet and that would be money gone, but if that's what i have to do... ? 

we're going to take a 0 tomorrow and i'm going to an AYCE (all you can eat) breakfast at shaw's here in monson.... it's all i've been hearing about from the nobos for the last couple of days, and i'm super excited about it. i guess i should go to bed so i can wake up in time for it... breakfast bell rings at 7:30! 

there are many ways to thru hike the AT... the traditional way to do it is to start south in georgia and head to maine and be northbound (or a nobo). the less common way to hike the AT iis to be a southbounder and start in maine and head towards georgia. then there's the flip flop and the yo-yo. flipping is hiking a section one way, then skipping ahead and hiking the remainder of the trail in the other direction. yo-yoing is completing the entire trail one way, then turning right back around and hiking it again in the opposite direction.

i have chosen to flip flop and will summit mount katahdin in the next few days, then head south to new york where i left off. i've decided to flip to avoid as much cold weather as possible. my friend joshua who started his thru hike in mid-march will finish his hike today or tomorrow and his weather reports for maine include temps in the 40s on a regular basis in the mornings. i also met a guy yesterday who did the presidential range in the white mountains a few weeks ago and said it was 42 degrees in the morning time. i am not a fan of cold weather and i have no desire to eventually have to hike in and/or pitch my tent in the snow.

i've spent pretty much an entire week off the trail and have turned into a marshmallow. my friends taylor & carolyn picked me up and we spent four or five days at lake champion, a young life camp in southern new york. it's a church camp that targets troubled youth and the program that they have going on is amazing. i was only planning on staying one day but even as an adult guest, i had a ton of fun listening to the messages and participating in the activities (i still suck at rock climbing). the food was amazing, too... everyday, an all you can eat meal that was fit for a king. there was even one morning where the adult guests had the option of waking up early to make the kids' breakfasts. i got to the kitchen @ 630a and was assigned to cooking eggs and by 830, our team of three had cooked more than 700 eggs!!

just as taylor was driving me back to the trail the other night after picking up my new pack, the phone call from joshua came in that made me question whether i wanted to remain on a northbound track. taylor and i had supper at a local pizza place where i had my first slice of NY-style pizza in the actual state of new york. chicken, bacon, ranch and delicious. :) over supper, the decision was made that i'd think my hike out over another night at the RV (tough call there!). in the next twelve hours, i thought and thought and thought about it and decided that i didn't want to hike in the freezing temps later on. also, my cold weather gear is limited, as are my funds for buying more clothes. and finishing in new york would put me that much closer to home, which will make for less gas (and thus less money) to get me where i'll eventually need to be.

so here i am! we're in maine right now and it's cold and rainy but i'm excited about katahdin and i'm really excited about possibly seeing a moose (the one animal left on my "gotta see" list) and we'll see how this all goes in the next few weeks to come. :)

movin' on up...

i exited the great state of pennsylvania today. on the appalachian trail, pretty much every state is known for something. georgia has its big ass mountains and climbs that make the weak ones quit, virginia is a mileage hog and claims the most blazes, west virginia has the atc, the traditional halfway point where you get your picture taken and put in the record books, new hampshire has the white mountains, maine has katahdin... and pennsylvania has rocks. and lots of them, from smooth as a baby's bum to sharp as a knife. some you'll never notice because they're so small, and others you have to put away your trekking poles because you'll be using both hands on the ascent or descent. but they weren't as bad as i thought they were going to be. pennsylvania is known as the state "where boots go to die" and granted, my shoes fell apart in pa, but come on... they had 1,000 miles on them. it was kind of expected. but people make it sound like you'll bloody your feet and that 2-mile hours are good ones... not so. i'd say 75-80% of pa wasn't any worse than virginia.

i ran into a lot of awesome trail magic in pa, specifically jillian and her dad taking me to get new shoes and to the stock car races, and renee and john feeding, clothing, annd shelterig us for a four-day, three-night mini-vacay. let me clarify that less than a week ago, i didn't know these people existed and the only reason i know now is because renee has a weakness for dogs. :) last week was a record-breaking week for pa: when the high hit 106 with a heat index of 114, that was the hottest it'd beenn here. ever. so when i walked into the pet store in a town that wasn't too far off the trail so that swayze could make use of the air conndition, renee approached us and asked iif we were hiking the trail and where we'd come from. my friend francois was with me, and when we told her we'd both come from georgia, she invited us back to her house where she and her husband, john, pampered the heck out of us for the next few days. she did our laundry and cooked so much food for us and made coffee every morning and they took us to jim thorpe, pa and we toured the entire historical town and they let us slackpack lehigh gap, one of the most challenging rock scrambles south of the whites in new hampshire... the list of their favors seriously goes onn and on. we exchanged phone numbers and addresses before we left, and she packed us a sack lunch and cried when they dropped us off at the trailhead. i love how God puts people like that in my path. :)

so basically we're doing a-okay. my pack broke annd osprey won't ship me a new one without charging a credit card a $250 deposit until they get my old one back (boooooo), so i'm gonna have to go into a town sixteen miles off the trail to get a retailer to exchange it. we'll see how that goes, since that'll have to be in new york and it's illegal to hitchhike in nnew york. also, my friend taylor that i met who's hiking as a fundraiser for young life invited me to one of the yl camps there in new york for a day or two to see what it's like, just in case that's something i'd be interested in post-hike.

i'm loving life and missing my friends annd family but loving the new people i meet each day as well. out of 2,181 miles, i have less than 900 left to hike. i was smilin' from ear to ear today when i hiked into new jersey. that grin'll only get bigger the closer i get to maine.

oh! and to add to the awesomeness of pa, i saw my first two rattlesnakes. the first onne i saw on a "cold" (70*) day when it was raining and he never even moved, even though i was 3.5' from him and the other one actually rattled at me and tried to get away. i think it's cool that i finally got to see a rattler, but i'll be completely okay with never seeing one again. :)

also, big, big thanks to jennifer, wendy (evenn though the PO sucks), amannda, kelly, and gray for the awesome mail drops. :) each one of them made me oh-so-happy and made swayze wag her butt.

so the lady didn't really call animal control on me. i walked outside the library after my last update, and swayze was laying outside in the shade chillin' like a villian. not even panting. the lady was crazy... the librarian even walked outside and told me so. she apologized and was really nice. a few miles north of there, i met up with danielle from v.i. she lives in harpers ferry, and she picked us up and took us to the post office and the ATC and i got a hot shower at her house and an awesome bed and amazing cookies. mmm... haha i think i ate half of a batch of cookies that first night. harpers ferry was an awesome milestone for us; it's the traditional halfway point where the appalachian trail conservancy is. i met back up with a few hiking friends that i hadn't seen in a while and met some new faces. i got to hike with birch and magic mix for a few days... i was so excited to finally meet stk lady killa, magic's kitty! :) we did a 30 mile day to get to pine grove furnace state park, the home of the half gallon challenge. i am the proud owner of a little wooden spoon that says "member of the half gal club." :D i ate a half gallon of cookies 'n' cream in less than an hour... 2,700 calories, 160g of fat, and 128% of my daily calcium needs in pure, cold goodness. i even got freezer-burn tongue. :) i hiked with magic and birch until boiling springs, where i wound up taking my first zero in FIFTEEN days! i was so proud of myself... haha. i took a zero for a good cause, too. jillian sent me a facebook message saying she lives half an hour from boiling springs, so if i needed anything to just let her know. when i asked her where an outfitter was, she gave me her dad's number and her dad came and picked us up and took us to dick's to get a new pair of shoes... my shoes were dead. the soles were coming off and my feet got wet every time it rained. after i bought my new kicks, we headed to the stock car races! =) hahaha... we went to the track in mechanicsville, pa. it was kids' night, and i got to jump in a moon jump! and we got free snow cones! and there were FIREWORKS! :) it was basically an awesome time with awesome people. after the races, jill's dad took us back to boiling springs and we pitched our tent in the yard of a really nice local. we just now hit the rocks that pennsylvania's famous for this morning... we'll see how bad it gets here in the next few days. i met a southbounder today who said the rattlers are really bad from here north to jersey... he showed us the rattle of the snake that he killed yesterday and ate for dinner. he's pretty hardcore, haha. 

hmm. i should go find somewhere to take a shower. i'm pretty stinky. 

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. :)

owaijef;oij!!

i feel like there's so much to update! i've been having cell phone issues and i've not really been in any position to have computer access for a while. plus there was trail days in damascus and hiking with my cousin and getting to see nick and jolie and roxanne for a bit. i also got a new pack today!!! the cheap pack i started out with just wasn't cutting it as far as comfort goes, so i requested an early birthday present from my parents today and bought an osprey 65l. so excited! i will try to keep the updates more regular, for my sake and memory as well as y'all's, but for now i gotta say my goodbyes to my cousin and then hit the mountain. thank God for sunshine! =)

gsmnp should be reported for illegal hazing activities

to sum up the last little bit... i've learned that if you make ramen noodles and then add instant mashed potatoes to it and a little more hot water, then cover it in a few ketchup packets, it actually makes a heck of a carb-loaded meal. also, the kennel came and picked swayze up (since she can't go into the smokies) and she started cryin' and it almost made me cry. when we got to the fontana dam shelter the other night, the shelter was nearly full so we all just decided to cowboy camp (just sleeping bags under the stars, no tent) by the fire. it was awesome. :)

i do believe i'll be in damascus this upcoming weekend for trail days! :) my awesome cousin volunteered to drop by wherever we are and pick us up and take us. i would love to see as many bristol people as i can, so drop by and come see us! i won't have a car, but maybe i can convince my cousin we need a coffee date at starbucks or something.

i don't think i like the smokies. or maybe it's just because yesterday was my longest day yet and it included the monster uphill to shuckstack fire tower. yesterday was the first day where i actually got grumpy and felt like a two year old. i was tired and the shelters felt more and more spread out ........

i crave ketchup.

this upcoming tuesday will make two weeks that i've been on the trail. i may not be as far along as i'd like to be, but i'll take it because i haven't had any injuries other than some minor blisters, a few bruised toenails, and a case of sunburn. some of these people out here try and do big miles from the get go and end up blowing their knees out and having to pull off the trail within the first week. there was a kid that came all the way over here from tiawan and he slipped and messed his knee up on the first day out and had to go back home. and just tonight, we had to go pick up a guy that we met three days ago at the hospital because he sliced his knee to the bone. four stitches inside, seven out, and he's off the trail just like that.

a lot of things change when you live in the woods for right at two weeks. the number one thing i can think of right now is how you view grocery stores. walking into a grocery store is SO overwhelming... knowing you can have any food in the store that you want almost seems too good to be true. and i'm so aware of prices and weights. generic poptarts are only $1.25ish, whereas name brand can be upwards of $2 a box. and the other day i wanted some fig newtons, but the only generic pack they had was a two pound pack. they had it advertised on the pack as "2 pounds!" like it was a good thing or something. i don't know a single person who would willingly carry two pounds of fig newtons. ounces make pounds.

my "hiker hunger" hasn't really set in just yet. apparently, when you're in the woods, you get cravings like a pregnant woman and your appetite increases tenfold. the only thing i've been craving in the woods thus far has been ketchup. i stocked up on plenty of that from wendy's tonight so i'll have it when i fix my hashbrowns sometimme this week. maybe i'll add it to my fake mashed potatoes as well.

i'm having a really great time out here. yesterday, i did some of my first ever night hiking. had the trail not been as well-blazed as it was, it might've been a little unnerving, but it was really awesome. when we got done, it was neat to just sit down and look up at the stars and know that i had nowhere to be and nothing i needed to be doing.

i'm also meeting some really awesome people. i met ranger and slow snail, a mother and daughter from vermont. the mother fell coming off blood mountain and really hurt her knee, but instead of packing up and going home, they're taking their time and doing just a few miles a day. i met a guy named dwight from alabama. he reminded me so much of mr. tommy. :) he and i got to talkin' SEC football and he was telling me that he loves it when the players get so into the game that they cry. he told me if i ever get the chance, i should watch the ole miss vs. alabama game where it was neck and neck until the last minute where alabama held the lead and archie manning cried. as he described the game to me, he teared up and didn't apologize for it. :) his family is all accounted for from the tornadoes except for his mother in a nursing home. y'all please pray for dwight and slow snail. dwight's wife picked him up this morning (he was only section hiking), so he should have some news about his mama, but everybody affected by the alabama storms still needs so much prayer. and yesterday we did some of our first rock scrambling (having to use all fours to climb), and i don't know how slow snail will safely be able to manage with her bum knee.

i haven't really gotten a firm trail name yet... till and miss janet both called me patrick ("hey look... it's patrick and swayze") so i signed a few log books as patrick, but then tonight "our" group of four were standing around in the parking lot just havin' a good ol' time and they called me giggles 'cause i tend to laugh... a lot. so we'll see... maybe i'll give it some more time?

andddd i finally found a raincoat/jacket for swayze tonight. i'm so excited that she won't be cold anymore and that i won't have to share my fleece. :)

zero days are good for the soul

so i hope everybody back home in mississippi, alabama, and tennessee is okay! i've seen some of the footage of the rough weather that y'all are having. we're getting some of that tonight, so swayze and i are staying off the trail until tomorrow morning. my budget didn't account for tornados.

yesterday was awesome. :) we had a tiny hike into a parking lot that was roughly eleven miles from the town that i was supposed to resupply in. i had planned on maybe getting to the town early, resupplying, and then getting a ride back to the trail to camp last night, but we had absolutely no cell phone reception when we got to the parking lot. boo that, haha. so a guy that i've met on the trail and i started walking into town. we had just enough cell phone reception to send and receive texts, but not make phone calls, so he sent his mama a text message and she called the hotel that provided shuttle services into town. they came to pick us up, and i'll be danged if it wasn't miss janet that was driving the bus!!! :) that might not mean a lot to y'all, but i was starstruck! hahaha... miss janet is pretty much famous on the AT and whiteblaze. when one of the guys got dropped off at the place he was staying, he was like, "bye miss janet!" and i was like, "are you THE miss janet?" i got her autograph and a picture with her and she even gave swayze dog treats! :) she also fussed at us about how we were going about hitchhiking the whole wrong way. she said the three rules of hitchhiking are:

1) stop walking. if you're walking, that means you're okay and you don't need help.

2) get to a place where people can pull over. even if they want to, if they can't get to you, you're screwed.

3) smile and act happy. no one wants to pick up a freak.

also! it turns out that the people who gave us the lemon cookies and root beer the other day is actually a guy named taylor who is slackpacking the whole way to maine and his wife is meeting him at trailheads and driving him to an rv every night. they are SO nice! he came and found us at the hotel last night and drove me to the vet clinic that was three miles up the road so i could get swayze some tick medicine and then took me to mcdonalds. it might not've been a homemade or five guys burger, but i finally got that cheeseburger and sweet tea. :) he's also offered to pick us up in the morning to drive us to the trailhead.

and today has been wonderful. zero days, man. i think it's just what i've needed. granted, i probably shouldn't take many in towns because towns are expensive, but even swayze seems to feel better. i've had a nap and two hot showers within the last twenty-four hours. it kind of sucks because almost all day today the weather was pretty (it's starting to look pretty rough here now), and in the back of my mind i was thinking the whole time, "man. you're not getting any miles in today. you should be hiking. what're you doing?" but hopefully i'll feel better in the long run for doing it. i've heard it said, "start out slow, and then go slower." well... you can't get much slower than 0.

and for those of y'all who've been asking... i will let y'all know where i'll be soon, i promise! (just so y'all know.. i will only be posting WHEN i will be places on facebook and only my friends will be able to see it... just to deter any creepers.) i will say that my list has changed... i'm no longer asking for ground coffee. that was dumb. i don't feel like waking up in the morning and boiling water and filtering coffee. i'm slow enough as it is at breaking camp. if the whole wide world depended on me to break camp in less than fifteen minutes, we'd all be screwed. i've not built a fire since i started, so i no longer need dryer lint, hahaha. and i think i hate peanut butter now so i've taken that off the list. (nutella is still a go, though. ;D) snickers are always welcome in any shape or size. they're pretty much payment between hikers. ("i'll trade you a couple of snickers for some hot water for my oatmeal.") but i think i've sworn off oatmeal, too, so i don't need any of that.

thank y'all so much for all y'all's support thus far. i love y'all and miss y'all. :)

oh, those prayers

roarrr. y'all pray for swayze please. her pack is rubbing her and she's really tired. i gave her some pain meds tonight, but i'm out of duct tape and athletic tape just isn't cutting it. maybe i'll trade somebody a few feet of duct tape for a few snickers tomorrow.

happy easter, y'all. today was a gorgeous hiking day. it was hot and i got sunburned but i'll take sunshine over rain anyday. i'm exhausted, though. since swayze's having trouble with her pack, i let her slackpack (go without a pack) a few times on the uphills. i'm sure she loved it, but i weighed MY pack the other day at the hostel and it weighed 43 lbs. adding her pack to mine today probably put me in the neighborhood of 50. needless to say, i'll be knocking myself out with a hydrocodone here in a few minutes. i'm too tired to even eat tonight.

thank all y'all for any prayers y'all are sending our way. you know, it's absolutely amazing, but all of my prayers have been answered on this trip thus far. God rocks. :) in reverse order, i was really prayin' there'd be a trail angel in the parking lot when i came off a mountain today. a trail angel is anyone who helps a hiker out, whether it's food or shelter or a ride into town. swayze and i came down the mountain today and there was a couple sitting in a car. they rolled the windows down and asked if we needed a ride into town, but i don't really need a resupply just yet and i'm still kinda skeptical of hitching (even though just about everybody on the trail does it), so i told them i was fine, thanked them, then swayze and i sat down in the shade to have lunch. right as they were leaving, the lady called out to me and offered me some lemon cookies and half a root beer. yes, ma'am... i'll take that. swayze was a fan as well. :)

one of my absolute pet peeves is a sparsely-marked trail. yesterday we pretty much hiked alone all day, and when we got to the last four miles or so, the blazes became few and far between. i was tired and hungry and all i could think of was, "Lord, just show me a blaze. let me know i'm goin in the right direction." and sure enough, every time i'd ask, there would be a blaze soon after. also last night, i was praying that there'd either be a familiar face or no one at all at the shelter. when i got there, there were two people from our "group" and two new people. i breathed a huge sigh of relief. the same exact thing happened again tonight. when i got to the campsite, it was just me and a guy i haven't seen yet. i specifically asked for someone in our group to show up, and not half an hour later, i heard a familar voice.

there've also been two instances where it's poured down rain at night and i've laid there in my tent and said, "God, just please let it be gone by daylight," and it quits at sunrise. :)

so whatever y'all have been praying, keep doing it 'cause it's working. thank y'all so much. maybe we should start working on a big, fat, juicy hamburger with lettuce and tomato and pickles and ketchup with a really ginormous glass of sweet tea and some salt & vinegar chips. at this point, that'd basically be heaven on earth.

ohhh hostels :)

swayze and i are doing well! i had my first shower today since monday night. good thing, too, 'cause i pretty much smelled like death. a few of us put all our laundry together to make a full load so i've actually got clean clothes to boot! i wasn't real sure how to handle the whole town thing at first, what with swayze and all, but the people here at neels gap have been amazingly dog-friendly.

i can't do the hostel thing too often. it put me out $20 tonight. that'll really add up as i get closer to maine. i just stayed tonight 'cause we've had to deal with rain these last three days and it was actually really cold and windy today as we hiked over blood mountain. i feel so bad for swayze. :( i couldn't find her raincoat before i left for the trail and she hates being cold so i rigged her a raincoat out of the footprint of my tent. i'll have to find her something better, though, soon.

i haven't seen any bears yet, but some coyotes came way too close to our camp the other night.

the group i'm with is pretty awesome. :) they all seem to like swayze and til, a german guy who's section hiking, gave her like half of his bag of beef jerky the other day for lunch. vicky and rich have been extremely nice to me, giving me some of their filtered water and letting me use their cell phone. another guy who's hikin' with us, james, picked up swayze's collar that i'd accidentally dropped halfway up a mountain and didn't realize until we were at the top.

and in other news, i pooped in the woods for the first time ever.

just a walk in the woods...

started today! ::) daddy drove me to US42 this morning and hiked the .9 miles to springer w/me. swayze's doing awesome. we made it to hawk mountain shelter tonight... we caught up with and passed two groups of people today. my confidence has been greatly increased thwse last eight hours. :)

there's no place like home

i've been home for a whole six days and it's been absolutely amazing. the weather has been gorgeous, despite the tornadoes that we had friday (except that i really like bad weather, so i even enjoyed those, too... minus all the damage that was done). i've been able to spend time with my mama and my daddy and my awesome friends.

and as much as i hate that the opportunity arose, i got to witness one of the most heart-warming, patriotic events i've ever seen. ssgt. jason rogers, a marine from brandon, ms, was killed in action a week and a half ago in afghanistan. westboro "baptist church" had posted on its website that they were going to show up and picket the funeral. within twenty-four hours of their announcement, the news had spread like wildfire on facebook and hundreds of people had pledged to show up and, along with the patriot guard riders, stand between the family and the westboro hate group (because that's really all they are). it made my heart so happy yesterday to see all of those people out there paying their final respects to a hometown hero.

and it makes me even happier to say that westboro didn't even show up. i've heard it's because they don't show up to funerals where they're not going to get media coverage. and our news stations didn't mention westboro one bit. if this is the case, and they didn't show up because they were told that they wouldn't get any coverage, then it infuriates me to think of all the funerals that they *do* show up to because that probably means they were guaranteed media coverage. if you don't give these people the attention that they ask for, they will stop! i'm just glad that the family didn't have to deal with them yesterday. no one should have to deal with them.

so perhaps i'll hit the road tomorrow. that's the plan, anyways. my daddy's gonna take me to georgia and then i reckon he'll drop me off at springer tuesday morning. i'm gonna skip the approach trail (all the super-purists out there just had a heart attack) and i told my daddy to bring his hikin' shoes if he wanted to do the first little bit with me. it'll only be two miles. he's still young enough to make it. ;)

oh hey there antibiotics

so i was supposed to leave for georgia today, but it just absolutely wasn't meant to be. my friend katie, who was driving back to charleston from california and was going to swing by jackson to pick me up, somehow contracted pneumonia and was put on breathing treatments so had to be driven back to charleston herself. and as if that wasn't a big enough sign that i wasn't meant to leave today, i came down with a fever of 101.2* yesterday and felt like crappp. i still felt pretty poopy today, so this morning i was at MEA when they opened at 8:30. turns out, i have strep throat. they gave me a butt shot there at the clinic this morning and a prescription for an antibiotic and three days' worth of lortab with one refill for that hit-by-train feelin' i've got. the refill should come in handy on the trail.

i'm kind of glad i haven't left yet. i don't feel ready. i still haven't practiced my bear-bagging skillz and i still need to set my tent up with the rainfly all tied out. i need to finish buying my food and i still probably need another pair of shorts. plus, there's apparently some pretty nasty weather that's supposed to roll in here in the next few days and that would put me starting the AT on a rainy day. i know, i know. no rain, no pain, no maine, but still. i'd like to start out on a good weather day if possible. :)

maybe i'll leave tomorrow. my dad volunteered to take me to springer if the need be.

i took swayze to the vet the other day. she wasn't due for her vaccinations until july, but i didn't want to have to worry about finding a vet on the trail and she needed her bordatella booster if i'm going to be boarding her through the smokies. she also got a shot for a six-month heartworm preventative. that's cool... that's one less thing i have to worry about carrying &/or having shipped to myself while we're on the trail. the vet also said that if swayze was hiking with me, she could stand to gain a few pounds. she's been enjoying that. :) peanut butter on crackers, extra dog food, etc.

i'll be taking my cell phone with me on the trail. we bought a solar-powered cell phone charger off amazon the other day for like $30. it's also got an AM/FM radio and a weather radio. i'd rather be able to play mumford & sons and old crow on the trail, but since i don't have an ipod, i'll take what i can get.  

four energy drinks, a cop, and a pay phone...

arrrr. the drive back to mississippi suckedddd. i didn't leave charleston until right at two. i always do that. i procrastinate leaving a place if i really like being there. home. bristol. and apparently charleston. i stopped by starbucks before i left, and everybody there made me cry. tears fell for twenty miles up 26.

the drive took approximately twelve hours for eight hundred some-odd miles and five stops, only four of which were planned. the fifth one involved being stopped by a cop less than thirty miles from jackson who felt the need to let me know that the back end of my truck was wider than the front end and that i should keep an eye on my lanes. he was really nice about it, so i didn't feel the need to inform him that the reason i was iffy about keepin' it between the lines was because i was nodding off as i passed him. i just said, "yes, sir, thank you, sorry," and kept on goin'. i freakin' love mississippi cops. they never *knock on wood* write me tickets. i think it's the wink. just kidding.

my cell phone battery lasted just long enough for me to call my mama right before birmingham to find out what kind of weather i was headed into. there was crazy awesome lightning, but i basically wanted to know if it was gonna be raining the whole way in. turns out, i was headed into tornado warning territory. excellent. we just all slowed to thirty and used our flashers for a dozen miles or so. right before my battery died, i received a text from bank of america that my debit card had been temporarily suspended because of "curious activity" on my account. dear bank of america: south carolina and georgia are next door neighbors. it's completely possible to travel amongst the two states in less than twelve hours, so please refrain from putting accounts on hold if there's spending going on that close to each other. ya poops.

so because i couldn't use my debit card, and my cell phone was dead, and all of my chargers were packed into the back of a 16' moving van, i actually had the privelege of using a pay phone tonight. i know, right? i was surprised they still had those, too. i was almost worried about catching something from it, but i figure it was probably last used about eight years ago and any germs that were living on it then are probably dead by now. so i call bank of america and verify my email address, blah blah blah, and the guy says that he'll put a temporary travel notice on my account. i told him he might want to make it more than temporary because within the next few months i'll be traveling a lot. he asked me to list each state, and bless his heart, i think he lost count when i got to pennsylvania. he then just asked for a general route, "so will you be going from south carolina to new york city?" and i said, "nope. georgia to maine."

my time in chucktown is winding down...

---

dear springer mountain, 

i will see you friday, april 15th. 

your secret admirer, 

angie (who, i suppose, is not so secret anymore)

this is so surreal. i've got less than forty-eight hours left in charleston, sc. i'm going to pack up my things and haul them back to mississippi and then one of my friends will drive me to georgia and drop me off at the foot of a mountain and then i'll walk to maine. i'll walk to maine? that doesn't even seem halfway realistic to me. which is why it's so awesome. :) 

i bought my stove yesterday... it basically looks like the coleman equivalent to the msr pocket rocket, except that it may be a bit larger and it doesn't come with its own cool plastic carrying case. i also bought an emergency blanket and hand warmers. just in case. and because they were on clearance. i figured it was smarter to buy a pack of hand warmers, which came with 3 sets, for $1.50 than it was to buy just a single pair of foot warmers for the same price. i figured if my feet really get all that cold, i can substitute out hand warmers for feet warmers. tomayto, tomahto. i still have to buy a poop shovel. 

what else have i bought recently? oh! i swung by the military surplus store and bought a fleece. he cut me a deal on it. $25 instead of $40. it doesn't have pit zips, but i've worn kelly's and it's super comfy. if anything, i can use it at a pillow if it gets too warm to wear in camp at night. i also bought antibacterial hand junk and a sponge for the condensation for the tent. 

i've gone out the last two nights in a row with really awesome people each time. when my friends have introduced me to people these past couple of days, i've been "the person who is going to hike the appalachian trail," like i'm some sort of awesome or something? my friend josh said he's been telling people that his friend is going to hike the AT and when they ask, "the whole thing?", he replied, "yeah, you think i'd be friends with somebody who'd just hike half of it?" i know this sounds so mushy and crap, but it makes me and my heart so happy to know that all of these people have so much faith in me and my abilities. it's so amazing that i have so many people who are so dad-gum so supportive. :)

i will definitely miss everybody here. i sort of feel like i've just started really turning over new leaves in charleston as of recently. i think i can honestly say i will miss chucktown. the people more than the place, but it's the thought that counts, right? too bad i can't afford to live here. otherwise, i just might come back. maybe. 

tomorrow (today) is my last day at work. i've gotta be at work in three hours, forty-five minutes. then i'll work until 3:30 and then kelly and i will go pick up the van and load my stuff into it. i really just need her help for the washer & dryer since it's so God-awful heavy. i can load the rest of the stuff by myself. it just might take a while. i can't believe i'll be heading home to mississippi in just over twenty-four hours. 

i will miss everybody.

p.s. swayze loves her backpack. 

p.s.s. swayze loves powdered donuts more.