Date: 2011-07-08
From: Mark and Pat's House

To: Riga Shelter
Miles today: 13.7
Weather: overcast clouds

(In which a visitor arrives on the trail)I eat breakfast and chat with Mark and Pat in the morning. Mark plans to keep a trail journal on his hike next year, and I look forward to having at least one journal to follow. Mark drops me back off at the trail, and I wish him luck on his hike, hoping that his accumulated trail karma serves him well.The trail is wet from early morning rain, and I don't see any other hikers all morning. Stopping for lunch I see a hiker headed southbound, and she nods as she passes. I find out later that she is the first hiker to start in Maine this year that I've seen, and that as the second southbounder after Jennifer Pharr Davis on her record attempt, she is somewhat sick of gawking northbounders eager to talk to one of the first real southbounders.It starts to rain in the afternoon, and though I stay almost completely dry underneath the trees for the first ten minutes, I know it's just a matter of time before the rain makes its way down to the forest floor, and sure enough the leaves start dripping I get plenty wet. The rain stops by the time I reach the road crossing to Salisbury, a short half a mile off trail, and by the time I finish the road walk into town I'm mostly dry.Salisbury is a small, posh village that seems to consist mostly of rich summering New Yorkers and the shops that serve them. Food options are limited to an expensive restaurant and a small expensive market. I attempt to resupply at the market, but its fancy food selection contains almost none of the necessary hiker snack foods. I manage to find Pringles and Snickers, enough to at least get me through the next day or two, but I think fondly back to the small poor southern towns and their hiker-friendly Family Dollars.I hike to a shelter with an impressive east-facing view. I am tempted to stay in the shelter to avoid the rain and watch the sunrise in the morning, as Checker plans to, but I fear the mosquitoes more than I fear the rain, so I set up my tent in the drizzle. I eat dinner in the shelter with Vinca and Poncho Verde, Shiver and Mule, whom I have not seen for a while, along with Checker.Poncho Verde tells a story of finding baby kittens on the trail back near Boiling Springs carrying them to Duncannon, and then having two of the kittens die from what the vet thought was likely rabies, which is apparently highly contagious from kittens, has no know cure other than vaccination and is nearly always fatal if you reach the point where you're showing symptoms. After a brief period in which all of the thru-hikers who had touched the kittens were tracked down and the CDC prepared to get involved, the test results showed that the dead kittens did not, in fact, have rabies, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.During a dinner of peanut butter and honey on a bagel I realize that this is my 100th day on the AT. I think to myself that I should have brought a Hostess cupcake out to celebrate, but considering such snack products were nowhere to be found in Salisbury, it would have been a moot point anyway.Shortly after 9pm when I am in my tent writing, someone walks up to the campsite and I hear a familiar, "Hey." My father, who wrote that he might come out and find me on the AT this weekend, has indeed found me and my tent by hiking southbound from several miles north on the trail. He sets up his Copper Spur 2 next to mine, and we chat between the tents. My siblings FastLayne and Inferno have just finished their Denali expedition, summiting July 4th and leaving the mountain today, and from my tent I get to listen to my dad's cellphone conversation with my brother, who is waiting for his pizza at the visitors' center in Denali National Park.With the sighting of my first southbounder, the arrival of my first family visitor and being three miles away from my home state of Massachusetts, I realize that this has been a pretty great 100th day after all, even without cupcakes.