Hot Springs, A Detailed Day In A Hiker Town

     We have spent the last few days in the small town of Hot Springs, NC population 650. We didn't really plan to spend as much time here as we did but we kind of fell in love with the little town (we hear a lot of hikers tend to). I arrived in town about a half hour before Tabb did and walked right over to this hostel that was right off the trail called "The Laughing Heart Hostel". I was informed by the man working there named Chuck Norris (His trail name since he looks just like him) that this was a new hostel that wasn't in our book and that it just opened 45 days ago. He said the hostel would be $12 a night and offered to show me the rooms. I said that I would check them out and the price seemed nice but I would have to wait for my brother to get down the mountain before I made a decision. The place looked nice and kind of had a dormitory feel to it do to the shared showers and the shared community living room with TV. When Tabb got down from the mountain he saw me sitting on the bench in front of the hostel talking to Chuck and came and joined us. We all talked for a while before I mentioned to him that this was a nice hostel and we should stay there since it was only $12. He agreed and said he didn't even need to look at it since I said it was nice and he liked Chuck Norris right off the bat.
     For dinner that night we went down to the local diner that was highly recommended by all the hikers and by Chuck. We went over there with a couple of our new friends that we met a couple days before this and actually gave one of them his trail name, Solo and 8 O'clock Sharp. We named 8 O'clock Sharp due to when Solo, Tabb and I were playing a game of cribbage in a shelter and he made known that he was going to be going to bed at 8 O'clock, 17 minutes from now, then in 13 minutes, then in 7 minutes. Anyways the dinner at the diner was delicious and we later came to find out that everything we were to eat there would be as well. After dinner we went down to the local bar 500ft away from the diner and had a beer with Solo. Solo is our cribbage buddy who has been playing for about 50 years he says, and has yet to win a game against me. We got to know him a little better and found that he was a youth counselor in Alaska for close to 30 years which was very interesting for my brother due to the fact that he is looking to go into the same kind of field of work.
     The next day we went into breakfast and had another amazing meal at this diner. After breakfast we went over to the public library which seemed like the only place anyone in the entire town was able to get internet access. We spent a couple hours there catching up with friends on Facebook and updating the Blog. Afterwards we went back to the hostel, I overheard people talking about work for stay opportunities that we may be able to do. I talked to Chuck about what kind of specialties that we have and let him know I was good with landscaping and my brother was into house flipping back home. When we went over to start working it turned out that the job he wanted us to do was to lay down click together flooring. When my brother heard this he was like "Awesome, this is what I do almost every day." So we got about half of the floor done in a couple hours and Chuck Norris was so surprised and happy that it looked good and that we knew what we were doing since he had never laid click together flooring. After we did our little bit of work we decided that we were going to do hot dogs for dinner on the grill. So we went down to the Hillbilly Market (that is what its actual name is) to get some hot dogs, buns and pickles. When we got back to the hostel we started to grill them up with Chuck and his wife Tigger who were grilling steaks for dinner that night. We had some great conversations with them while we were grilling and found out that they are actually from VA Beach and lived there for about 30 years. They even said that they knew our uncles and used to party on 50th st with them back in the day. After dinner we went down to the tavern again and hung out with all the hikers and played card games. We found out that the town really did revolve around the hikers when the bar even closed just after "Hiker Midnight" which is 9pm.
     The next day we were planning on leaving and found that Chuck Norris really wanted us to stay another day and help him finish the floor and he would let us stay for free again and take us out for breakfast. We figured it couldn't really hurt and we did want to finish the job that we started on the floor. After we got another delicious breakfast from the diner in town we started back on the floor. We finished it around 1pm and still had most of the day to relax. We decided we were going to go down to the market again and to buy some food to cook to save a little bit of money. We ended up actually getting a great deal on some frozen steaks, $7 for two one pound rib eyes. So we picked those up along with some mashed potatoes and a carton of chocolate ice cream and had an awesome lunch. After lunch our plan was to watch the first Lord of The Rings movie and play Wisest Wizard. Some of you older followers may have to look that up to find out what it is. We soon went into a food coma and fell asleep an hour into the movie. Later that night we were able to catch back up with Footloose who we haven't seen in about a week. It was really good catching up with him but he was going to be staying another day and we were heading back to the trail in the morning so we agreed to try and meet back up after we get back from staying with friends in Asheville.
     The next day it was raining in the morning and the electricity was even going in and out. We just sucked it up because we knew if we didn't get on our way or we thought we were never going to leave the town. Chuck Norris drove us down to the diner where we were going to have breakfast again before we left hoping that the storm would pass when we were eating. We had one last nice meal with him and then headed out on our way pleased to see that the rain had stopped and we would get to be walking in an overcast day without rain.
     It felt really good to be back on the trail but it was sad to leave such a nice little town. I really recommend going there if you are looking for a place to get away for a while. They have a lot of fun things to do there that we didn't get to do such as white water rafting and staying in the natural mineral baths that are offered from the resort for a daily price. Well this is what it is like in a trail town so if you see us not hiking for a little while on the spot tracker I hope you can now understand why.

-Turbo Toes

Magic, Rain, and the power of Croc's!

Whew, rough day on this last little trek.  It's been about 5 days on the trail now since we were in town and a few "special" things occured. A normal day for us goes like this, which the first 40 miles of this section were like - a list of what our normal day is like: wake up, pack everything back into our bags, put the tents away, have first breakfast, walk a bit, lots of elevation change up and down, second breakfast 5 miles in, up and down, lunch around 2, up and down, scenery doesn't really change, stare at an 18 inch path and avoid rocks, remember to look up to take in the views, then stop at a shelter around 6 pm that has been full with people since 3 pm, find a spot to pitch the tents, boil water on a small alcohol stove, eat noodles, mac n cheese, or some rice side dish, chit chat with the other hikers for 30 min, go to bed, wake up and repeat.  
This section though some good/tough memories were made. 
We were walking down this particularly scenic part of the trail following a stream with the occasional water fall, really enjoying the walk.  See some cars down by a road with people meandering about, wondered what the group was up to.  Got down to the road and began to walk by the group and said a friendly "hello, how are you?" in which one of the men responded
"you guys thru hikers?"
"we are"
"I know it's only nine a.m. and a bit early but you want a beer?"
look at my brother and smile, "why we would love a beer." he continues to open his trunk and hands us both a cold one.
then he said "we've come here to do a little trail magic"
It was awesome.  two thru hikers and one section hiker friend along with two wives came up to North Carolina for a trail reunion and set up a wonderful trail magic for some hikers.  Tons of food: candy bars, snacks, these absolutely delicious croissant chicken salad sandwiches, beers, and sodas.  Of course Turbo and I stopped for an hour or two and kind of gorged ourselves on the amazing food.  Great conversations with MoonDoggy and his wife Kelly.  Felt so rejuventated and connected to these people after our hour long visit with them. 
We somehow managed to pull ourselves away from the magic to continue the hike and moved on.  All we talked about for the next few miles though was how cool the people were and great the food was.  Then it started raining. 

Twas a cold rain. We threw on our ponchos and pushed our way up and down the hills. After a few hours we hit a shelter and decided to stop there after only a 10 mile walk.  The shelter was full of course so we pitched our tent during a lull in the rain, unpacked and joined the people at the shelter for conversation while we ate our dinners.  It rained all night and we woke up to the rain in our tents, we tried to wait to see if it would stop, but around 10 a.m. we gave up waiting we got up and packed our tents away wet.  It was our first day on the trail leaving during a rain storm.  The day started out not to bad, just a steady drizzle and we were staying pretty dry.  The weather just got worse from there though.  As the day continued the drizzle turned heavier, the wind picked up, and the temperature dropped.  The highlight of the misery was walking across Max Patch bald.  A bald, for those of you who do not know, is a mountain top covered in grass with no trees to block the view or, unfortunately for us, the wind.  Instead of a nice 360 degree view and a chance to lay in soft grass we were bombarded with 20 mph wind laced with 40 degree rain blowing horiztonally into our ponchos.  We were hoping for a 15 mile day but Max Patch wiped the energy right out of us.  It was a struggle to walk and each of us slipped in the mud once, our bodies were so numb it didn't really hurt to hit the ground but getting even more wet when it was that cold was not good. 

We ended up at shelter finally, which of course was full, but Turbo's ingenuity pulled through once again.  We ended up staying under the shelter in about a 3 foot crawl space.  There were 6 of us down there and it really felt like an adventure.  The weather was terrible, cold rain that turned into hail, but we were under cover cracking jokes and getting warm in our 20 degree sleeping bags.  We even got offered two beers in town by one of the appreciative guys that we told about our secret shelter under the shelter.  (He just bumped into me while I'm typing this, having that beer later tonight.)  

The next day was kind of epic.  Turbo woke up early and started a fire with ice covered sticks.  Lots of bonus points accrued there.  The whole shelter slowly woke up and thawed their frozen boots by the fire.  My "water-proof" boots were soaking wet after thawing out and Turbo's toe shoes were the same, so that day we left the shelter and hiked in croc's (the slipper shoes), walked 18 miles in the snow and ice in them, and finally made it into hot springs last night for a hot shower and clean sheets.
Taking our 6th zero day today.  We're about to go do a work for stay project that the hostel owner allows.  We'll work in the garden, clean some windows, or wash some clothes in exchange for a night in a bed.  I'll also be picking our my class schedule for William and Mary today.  So much to do on the zero day. 

Hope the long post was interesting enough to read.
-Tabb 

Day 20

The weather was actually decent today. We were expecting rain but it was no where to be seen. There should still be rain the next couple days though sadly. We woke up in a cloud though today which was pretty cool and soon realized why these mountains are called the smokys.
We hiked about 20 miles today and I think I'm gonna give up my vibrams and switch to my low top boots. They were just not very much fun in the rain and after a while I just start to not like hiking due to the fact that I'm constantly thinking about my feet while I'm hiking in them. I suppose I may need to get a new trail name, I guess we'll see its still pretty early on in the trail.
We were able to make it in a shelter tonight which was really nice. We prefer the shelters over having to set up our tents, I think mainly just because they allow more room to move around in. Tonight will be our last night in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. It kind of stinks since all the shelters and mileage signs were really nice but maybe it'll be less crowded getting out of here. Goodnight everyone.
-Turbo Toes

Our visit to Brevard

Wow what a nice time we had here with the Burghardts. We stayed for about three days with them and could have stayed longer if we didn't feel the need to get back to the trail. They were very amazing hosts to us. They drove a bit of a ways to come pick us up which we were surprised they would do for us. Then they took us to a buffet that night and they got to see how hikers eat coming right off the trail. Every meal we had with them was so delicious. Donna took us on a walk about her town and we were able to go to their nice bakery and cool toy store. We just wanted to say thank you so much for your hospitality and a very relaxing and rejuvinating stay. We hope to see yall again very soon.

Day 14

Didn't sleep very well last night due to the cramped camping spots causing us to sleep on a slant. We got up and were on our way by about 845am.
We actually had kind of a hard day today I was feeling pretty sick earlier with some stomach problems but I started feeling better after a quick rest at a shelter along the trail. We hiked about 16 miles to finish at a shelter. This is the first time that we were abke to sleep in a shelter. I was pretty much running on the trail to make sure we could get a spot. I even went about 3 miles without water towards the end since Tabb had the filter and he was behind me. It definitly paid off though because there were only 3 spots left in the shelter when I got there and I passed 4 people on the way. We get to fall asleep to a fire in the fire place tonight and someone playing Native American sounding music on their wood flute. We are getting picked up tomorrow by Craig, my dads old college roommate, and we'll get a chance to relax and get cleaned up. I think we may go a little slower when we get back on the trail to wait for some of the guys we were hiking with before, we are actuay kind of missing all of them.
We should be able to have service tomorrow night if anyone wants to call us, have a goodnight everyone.
-Turbo Toes

Day 13

We had a nice start this morning. We ended up camping with a few guys from Maine who are pretty cool guys. We left the campsite and hiked about 10 miles to get to Fontana Village, NC.
Fontana was a pretty nice town, a bit of a resort town. While we were there a Honda 2000 convention was in town and there were about 40 of them driving all over the town. We stopped and had a nice BBQ sandwich at a restaurant there in town. Once we ate we went back on our way to the trail.
The trail kind of went through the town a bit and we were able to meet a bunch of nice people. After eating at the restaurant we got a ride back to the trail by a man named Jeff who was in town with his family from St. Luis. They were there just enjoying all the outdoor recreation that Fontana and it surrounding areas had to offer.
Once we got back on the trail we had a hard hike up to start off the Smokey Mountains. We did a total of about 15 miles today. We are starting to realize if we want to ever stay in a shelter or get a good camping spot we need to show up earlier than 3pm! It really stinks that we hike hard long days and get really crappy spots to camp because some people are only hiking about 6-10 miles a day and then setting up camp. We are really looking forward to the point when the groups start thinning out. Thanks for listening to me complain a little tonight everyone, goodnight.
-Turbo Toes

Thanks for the Trail Magic!!

Just before we arrived in Franklin we received a message from our Father that there was a package waiting for us at the post office! When got to town we couldn't wait to see what goodies we were to receive. They sent us all kinds of things from candy bars to rice and noodles. We also got our favorite thing as well, homemade chocolate chip cookies made by Mrs. Manion!  There were even enough cookies too share with other hikers. We just wanted to say thanks and we loved the package.
We also really appreciated the beers that Dan and Ray left for us at the road crossing. Sad to say though we weren't able to find them. Another hiker may have grabbed them or probably just some kids that dont care. We still appreciated the thought.
- Turbo Toes and Tabb

Day 11

This morning was freezing!!! I felt really nice in my sleeping bag but when I got up it was pretty misserable putting away the tent. I was actually pretty warm mostly everywhere but my hands. Everything I did had to be in incriments of 45 seconds before I needed to put my hands back in my pockets to warm them up again.
We did a 17 mile day today ending in a place called the "NOC" (nantahalla outdoor center). Its a place where they do white water trips and the AT goes right through the complex.
During our hike I was in front of Tabb for a while when I saw a sign for a side trail that went off to a view, I decided to go up there and left a note for Tabb drawn on the ground in really large letters to let him know where I was going. When I came down it didn't take me long to realize that he didn't see my sign and thought that I was still in front of him. Needless to say we didn't see each other again for eight miles till we both arrived at the NOC. He arrived 2 hours before I did partly to the fact that he thought he was trying to catch up to me and also because I was having a problem with my knee due to a very steep downhill that went on for about 5 miles. I told another hiker that was walking in front of me that I was having some knee problems and if he saw my brother to tell him to wait up for me. He however didn't see my brother until he arrived at the NOC. Tabb decided to get a room for the both of us at the hostel here when hearing about my knee problem so that I could get some better rest.
After a while on the trail with my knee gurting I realized that I had not been adjusting my straps on my backpack for going downhill for some reason. Once I realized that and adjusted my straps I was now leaning back on the downhill instead of forward taking a lot of the pressure off my knees and I stopped getting the pain. Hopefully this was the only reason for my knee pain and I don't feel it tomorrow.
Anyway after a nice shower and hanging out with some friends I'm gonna get some sleep and do it all again tomorrow. Have a good night everyone.
-Turbo Toes

Day 10

We stayed in Franklin North Carolina last night. It aas a pretty neat little town. A man named Ron Haven took especially good care of us while we were in town. He drove us pretty much anywhere we needed to go and gave us all kinds of good advice as well as good stories. We started our hike a little late today, around noon. However we still were able to do about 15 miles before 630pm.
My favorite part of the day today was eating lunch on a bridge with a waterfall right in front of us. Also we packed in a few hot dogs from town and were able to cook those on the fire tonight. Well not much more than that happened today, it was kind of a boring hiking day.
We did however get a nice view in one spot towards then end of the hike. It is supposed to get in the 20's tonight so I'm gonna go ahead and curl up in my sleeping bag.
-Turbo Toes

Trail Names

on the AT people commonly use pseudonyms.  People go by nick names they might have had all their lives or maybe one that was given to them.  I've compiled a list of people we bump into quite often and have begun friendships with.  The community on the trail is quite strong, people share resources with one another and are quick to aide any one in need.  here goes:

Moo and Gordo - our first encounter with trail magic, a feast in the forest, one keg per day as much food as you want
Chatty Kathy (that's kathy with a K!) - funniest person i've met in a long time, told the most ridiculous stories and had me laughing uncontrollably about 7 times in a twenty minute rant of his.
Zig Zag- given the name zig zag for the way he runs downhill.  skinny twenty year old with long dreads and hikes about twice the speed of everyone else.
Pebbles- zig zag's compatriot, had the craziest blisters i've seen yet, one on the back of each heel 1.5 inches across, looked like a 3rd degree burn
Crocatoeahh (Croc)- gave him a "nice beard" business card, he has a 10 inch goatee and a penchant for wearing crocs
SandStorm- former marine and all around good new englander (patriots fan).  good conversations.
Diesel- old ripped dude who loves hiking
Baltimore Jack- thru hiked the trail 9 times, yoyo'd twice (that's up and back twice).  worked at neel's gap mountain crossing and everything he said I paid attention to
Footloose- our first hiking companion and still with us
The Hiking Viking-hiker from Denmark, and super cool

there are more and more, but i must get off the computer now.

I made it into William and Mary!
I think i'm going by just my middle name now until I'm dubbed something else that rings true. not feeling jack danger anymore.

-Tabb

Day 8

Biggest day yet so far! We hiked over 25 miles today. It was such a beautiful hike as well, almost all of it.through tunnels of hydrangeas.
We had a big burst of energy come our way this morning when there was a group doing easter morning trail magic breakfast that we stopped by. We each got a 6 egg omelet with bacon and sausage as well as a sandwich and snacks for later on the trail. I've decided to hike the entire trail with my vibrans and will be sending my boots home when I get to Franklin. I've also changed my name a little and am now going by Turbo Toes. We did a far hike today so that we could spend most of the day in Franklin. Well I'm cold from typing so goodnight everyone.
-Turbo Toes

Day 7

We left town today to get back on the trail. It was really nice to have a rest day. The shuttle took us back and we started the hike at about 945am. We hiked for about 12 miles today and I experienced what I thought waz the steepest climb so far. We finished our first state today and crossed into North Carolina at about 2pm. We are slowly getting closer to the smokies. Its been getting a bit chillier at night than it used to which is nice because my sleeping bag has been getting really warm.
I've hiked two strong days in my five fingers and feel like if im still liking them by the time I get to Franklin I will mail my boots home. Right now I am just carrying them in my pack and they are just weighing me down. If I send them back I can loose 3 more pounds in weight, which will feel great!  I also won our first game of trail cribbage using dice instead of a board. It worked but didn't really give us the aspect of the chase like the peg boards do. Well I'm gonna get to bed, it feels weird going to sleep at 9pm every night but feels good to start the day off early
-Turbo

Day 5

Footloose decided to head to town this morning because he was feeling really bad and needed some relax time to get himself healthy again.
So JD and I headed down the trail. We came across the trail magic place we heard about the day before and realized it was a lot closer to where we camped than we expected. We were a bit dissapointed that we missread the maps due to the fact that we could have a nice dinner if we would have hiked just a little bit further. We were able to get some hot breakfast however which was amazing! We had eggs, potatoes and spiral ham. This was just the boost we needed.
We went on to hike a bit further than we planned to today and went all the way to the road to Haiwassee, 15 miles down the trail. We were not able to get a shuttle so we had to hitch a ride. This is the first time either of us have done this. After about an hour and a half someone coming from town pulled into the parking lot. Seasdog and his wife were bring another hiker back to the trail on there way out of town and decided they would go back and take us to town since there were no more shuttles coming and we had already been trying to hitch for an hour and a half with no success, a lot of people waving at us and giving us thumbs up. Seadog and his wife were great, as soon as they pulled up they gave us an ice cold beer.
We got to motel and it was already filled with thru hikers. Once we set our bags in the room we heard, "hey we're driving to a buffet down the road if anyone wants to come." Naturally JD and I looked at each other and said, "yeah we're in!" Six big hikers piled into a a little honda civic and pulled into the buffet. At the buffet I had 4 whole fried hicken winges, a rack of ribs, about a half pound of mashed potatoes, some corn on the cob and a piece of chocolate cake. Even all this just felt like how I feel when I eat a cheeseburger and fries when im at home.
After dinner we decided to walk back to the motel and get some beer on the way home. When we got back we just sat on the porch of the motel with a handful of other hikers just chatting about, drinking and relaxing.
I just headed into bed a little while ago and found out it was a really good idea we decided to come into town today. It is pooring outside right now.
We are going to take a zero mileage day tomorrow and let our bodies rejuvinate a bit so we don't wear ourselves down and get injured. We'll be back on the trail Saturday morning. We'll have our phones on tomorrow if anyone wants to text us. If you want to call and chat call us after 9pm so that our minutes don't run, if you just want to give us a quick "hi" durring the day that would be ok though.
Have a great night everyone!
-Turbo

Day 4

We heard of our first bear encounter today. About five miles away from where we camped two groups had their food bags taken. They were able to recover a fuel bottle that had punctures in it.
Other than that prretty much all we did today was hike, and hike some more. We completed 18 miles today before we set up camp. JD and Footloose are feeling pretty horrible. Footloose has a bit of a cold or allergies right now and if he is still feeling bad tomorrow morning we might part ways for him to go back to the road and hitch to town for rest. On the plus side though we hit our 50 mile mark, which is pretty good for less than 3.5 days. They actually give out a patch for that in the boy scouts.
We hear that there will possibly be some trail magic tomorrow and there will be someone 2 miles or so from where we camped who will be cooking breakfast for hikers, which would be amazing! These are the kinds of things that push us up the trail. After we can some breakfast hopefully we will only have a 13 mile day tomorrow and then on Friday... Hiawassee!!
-Turbo

Day 3

I feel like we are starting to get the hang of the hiking. We really seemed to pick up the pace today. We completed over 11 miles easy by about 5pm with a long lunch at mountain crossing lodge. The lodge was a great place to hang out for a bit. JD and I were able to send back a lot of the things we didn't need while we were there even though we wanted to keep them, 12 pounds of things between the two of us. There were a few things that we really didn't want to part with including my throwing knives and his hat. Also while we were up there we met Baltimore Jack who told us lots of cool tips about the trail (he has thru-hiked 9 times). After a couple of hot dogs we were back on the trail.
We encounted our first thunderstorm and found out that our ponchos really seemed to work well. We were glad to hear from an oncomming hiker that we just missed a hail storm by about 15 minutes. We are camped out now and still have Footloose with us. Even though it rained we were able to get our first fire of the trip going.
JD and I seem to be doing really well and are having a blast out here. We are about a day ahead of schedule so if anyone was planning on sending us care packages push the ETA forward a day. Good night everyone!

-Turbo

Day 2

Today was a great day! We saw tons of great views today and even got a great picture of buzzards for buzzy. We ended up hiking an additional 7-8 miles than what our planned day was, so about 16 miles today.
We met a few awesome people today one awesome guy in particular that seemed to be going our pace and was planning on stopping at the same place as us to camp. His name is Footloose. He seems to really click well with jack and I. He taught us how to play yuker and we invited over the prettiest girl we have seen on the trail yet. She seemed pretty cool and its too bad we probably wont see her again anytime soon after tonight because she is not at our same pace.
The one bad thing that happened today was that the food I made last night had a good dose of vegetable oil in it thanks to jack. It was a little too much and I ended up feeling really bloated all night and couldn't sleep past 330am. I got him back though because he was behind me most of the hike and walked into all of gas traps I left for him.
We go to our first hostile tomorrow but will probably only end up staying for lunch because we have another 5 miles atleast to hike after that to feel productive. At the hostile we will be able to eat a few hot dogs and mail home any of the gear we don't need so we are pretty excited to get there.
-Turbo

Day 1

So I think that today was a great first day! We got to the trail a little late but ended up still finishing our first day's goal. We had to backtrack about a mile from the parking lot to get to the top of springer mountain (trail start) and then ended up hiking about 8 miles from there to the hawk mountain shelter. The shelter and everywhere sourounding is packed probably around 40 people here. We saw something kind of interesting also, there were a lot of military men and women hiking around near the entrance to the shelter. I suppose they hiked a little further down (not actually on any trails) and I suppose now they are doing some sort of war game due to all the gunfire we can here in the distance. Hopefully I can get some sleep through it. We have another short day tommorrow, only hiking about 7 miles. Tomorrows hike shouldn't be too bad I think since we have the entire day and we hiked about 9 miles today in about 4 hours. We'll see maybe we'll push past our goal. I have been using our tracker so you should be able to see our progress if you check the link. Good night everyone.

-Turbo,

The morning before we go

My pack is too heavy. I am not sure if I overpacked or my body just needs to be tougher. Even though we tried to go as light as possible all of my gear, 5 days or a bit more of food, and 3 litres of water adds up to 42 pounds. I was hoping for 35. I'm sure we will streamline as we go on and mail the extras home or delightfully toss them off a cliff.
Although I am hopeful, realistically I am expecting myself to summit the beginning hills slowly and painfully. I'll notice that pack every step I imagine, good thing it's mostly weighed down with delicious food.
It is hard to separate from my friends and family for so long, but I am hoping some great things will come from this walk. Today is the day I begin a new adventure and take another step (pun?) towards continually maturing myself. We have an 8 mile hike to the top of springer mountain today to get to the southern terminus of the trail. Then 2186 miles to finish. How do you eat an elephant?
-jack danger

The cat on my mind