Date: 2004-05-22
From: holiday inn express in erwin,tn

To: deep gap,nc
Miles today: 12.0

12 miles todaydeep gap,ncstealth tent sitei got a call late last night and it was from a thru hiker by the name of "quincygirl". i had recieved an email from her when i got to town and i had called her earlier and left a message. she is at home right now recovering from an upper respiratory infection. she was going to get off the trail in a few weeks anyway for a while. i hope she has a fast recovery. she plans to get back on at katahdin and walk south when she can. i also heard that another friend of mine had to get off the trail and doesn't plan on getting back on. you just have to be lucky to finish a thru hike because so many things can go wrong and end your hike. my congratulaions to all of you who give it a go. my mother said i was always a pain in the butt because i'm a morning person. i was planning on trying to sleep in this morning, but i'm waiting on the motel to put the coffee on. it's 5am, so it will be a while. i also called "miss janet" last night because i couldn't hike through erwin without stopping to see her. no one picked up her phone, so i'll try again later this morning. i went down and had a good breakfast and a few cups of coffee. i've really enjoyed my stay here at the holiday inn express. i called "miss janet" and she said she would pick me up about 11am. i was checked out and waiting in the lobby when she showed up. we took "whoa" and "moxie" back to her house and then took "underhill", "knuckles" and "samari" up to iron mountain gap so they could walk back. i took "miss janet" out to lunch even though she drove. we played a game of checkers while we waited on our rueben sandwichs. we were both terrible at checkers. i ordered a hamburger and another rueben to ! pack out with me. i always enjoy seeing "miss janet". she took me back down to the nolichucky river and we said goodbye to each other and i hiked on. i only went about a mile when i hiked by a campground with a payphone and decided to go over and check my email one more time. it was 1:30pm when i finally started hiking today and it was nice making it a short day. i started at 1700' elevation and hiked up and over beauty spot at 4437'. i stopped at curley maple gap shelter and ate my hamburger. there were three other hikers there and they said they learned a new lesson today as they were eating normal trail food...always pack out something good for the first day back on the trail. their names were "paparazzi", "swedish" and "shannon". we all got up to beauty spot about the same time and found part of a watermellon someone had left. we demolished it and i ate my rueben, so dinner is over. i almost stepped on the smallest snake ikve ever seen. he was only about 5" long and bl! ack with a red ring around his neck. i was able to do a double step and missed him. i saw another blue bird egg shell on the trail again today. if anyone knows what kind of bird that's from, please tell me in my guest book. i also saw my first rododendren on thr trail that had bloomed. there were quite a few of them right after indian grave gap. i met two other hikers that were on the trail today..."cato" and "zippout". "cato" said he was ready to call it quits and go home. i heard ofone other hiker that i had not met that got off. too bad. i had planned on staying up on beauty spot tonight because the views were awesome, but there has been thunder around and i don't want my two metal hiking poles holding up my tent on the top of a mountain in a thunder storm. i'm on a nice bed of soft leaves and it's getting ready to rain. the black flies were terrible this afternoon. "sweedish" had blood running down his face from some bites. i'm in my tent and the little buggers won't be bothering me anymore today. another beautiful day on the a.t.