Date: 2009-06-03
From: Laurel Creek Shelter

To: Campsite- Daleville 
Miles today: 14.3
Weather: clear sky

You just never know what you'll get on the A.T.! We started off easy today- planning to do a nero and camp just outside the city of Daleville, a short mileage day. By reading the elevation profile in our handbook we were *sure* that it would be an easy day. Sky was blue-blue-blue...a great day ahead! We saw Freebird and his crew early in the morning but lost them early on. We soon discovered that looks are decieving and the terrain was not what the handbook depicted (it happens every day, you'd think we'd learn by now). We were on our way very slowly to Tinker Cliffs (the forehead forecast was once again heavy showers), which we could actually see from McAffee Knob yesterday. As we were climbing the second big hill to Tinker Cliffs we saw them!! BEARS! Well it took us just over 700 miles but we finally have seen a bear on the A.T. Now we are official! It was a mother bear and two cubs. You could tell she was very protective of the little ones. They ran away from us down a ridge. The cubs would go behind the mother and she would stop to watch us and then let the cubs get ahead. She would look at the cubs- then us- then the cubs. She had it all under control. I couldn't get a picture because my camera was packed away in a freezer bag and the bears were moving fast, plus I didn't want to make any loud noises or rapid movement. Additionally, today we saw 6 deer, several toads and 3 snakes. A great day for wildlife. We took a long rest/nap on Tinker Cliffs and then headed down to the shelter about a mile away. At the shelter we pumped water at a nearby stream. Our water purifier is getting harder and harder to pump- we HAVE to get a new filter when we get into town. With a replaced filter and cleaned parts it should be woking fine for us again. Water stops have been taking us 20+ minutes. Berry can hardly press the pump so I've been getting a workout between the two of us! Our fluid intake as nearly trippled since the start. After the stop at the shelter we pressed on- another 8 miles or so until we needed to find a campsite. We didn't see a single soul all afternoon, although we did find a note on the trail written by Hardcore and Ninja to us, inviting us to meet them in Daleville. They didn't know we were planning to camp just outside the city. We got about 2 miles out and a fast moving thunder storm quickly moved in. We immediately scrambled under our tent fly to stay dry until the shower passed. It wasn't that bad- but it came out of nowhere. Toward the middle of the afternoon we thought we would be going down in elevation but we kept going up. We couldn't figure out where we were and how close the city was. The ridge kept going up and getting more narrow. Admittedly, the rocks were beautiful with large sandstone walls and outcroppings. We had to climb over all of them it seemed like. This wouldn't have been a problem except for the full blown T-storm we saw surrounding us.Thunder was getting louder and louder with ground lightning closing in. As the storm was brewing we moved as fast as possible trying to be careful not to hurt ourselves on the rocks. We kept going up and couldn't get off the ridge. We could see the town and it seemed like we were passing it. From the ridge we also saw that we were completely closed in from the coming storm and at some point we would have to just sit down and hope for the best. My hope was that at any moment we would begin going down- but it didn't happen. Wind was blowing like crazy with thunder and lightning crashing. We still weren't going down..only up. It was super frustrating and we had to remind ourselves that the Lord was in control.We got to a high point on the ridge and there were major powerlines going up the side with the trail running below towers and lines- about a 300yrd stretch of nothing but rock surface and powerlines overhead. At this point the storm was too severe to take the risk of crossing that section and I told Berry to follow me and we back-tracked to a large rock where we hunkered down below it, took our tent fly (again) and wrapped ourselves up like burrito's to weather the storm. We could feel the lightning and thunder in our throats- it was wild! Thankfully it only lasted about 45 minutes before it passed over. We crossed the powerline section and immediately started down the mountian into town. We debated really hard about going into town since we were wet and so close, but in the end we decided to camp in order to have a full day tomorrow for rest and resupply. I even got a fire started with wet sticks. Now our tent is up and the fly is drying out. We are stinky, hot and tired. It's muggy too... that's life on the trail. Living the dream!!!