Date: 2005-04-08
From: Kincora

To: Campsite 4.1 miles north of Vandeventer Shelter
Miles today: 21.6
Weather: light rain

start: Kincora finish: Campsite 4.1 miles north of Vandeventer Shelter miles: 21.6day: 32Happy second month on the trail!  Also, we passed the 400 mile mark yesterday.  (That's AT miles, not trip miles, which is larger because it includes the Approach Trail.)  We're still hiking, still having fun.  Although this hobby sure does require you to spend a lot of time on your feet.  Geez.We (Goldilocks and I, and Running Moon and Jukebox) left Kincora this morning, not slackpacking as it seems everyone else does here, but actually just walking north on the AT carrying our packs.  Definition: slackpacking - the act of walking the miles with little or no pack, often in the opposite direction to your trip, and usually aided by hostel owners who perform pickups and dropoffs.  The thing is, my pack only weighs 20 pounds anyway, and ... it's my stuff.  It goes where I go.After we hiked through the very pretty Laurel Creek gorge, and over Pond Flats, which is a good sized mountain, we ran into a NOBO hiker named Not Yet heading south looking for his dog.  He adopted what appears to be a blue heeler puppy, perhaps 4 months old.  The dog is great looking and just came off the trail and was hanging around a hostel in Erwin.  But now he can't find him this morning, and he wanted to know if perhaps he'd followed us onto the trail.  I hope they find each other.Speaking of dogs, I miss Stewie so very much.  Every day.  I got to pet a cool dog yesterday, though.  A purebred bloodhound.  What a cool dog!  He lives at Kincora.  Big jowls and floppy ears, and huge paws.  Only 1000 miles until I get to Connecticut and get to see my own dog.I've been watching a bruise on my hip go through it's changes.  I got it during a nasty fall onto a rock on the day of the snow storm.  It's now all pretty colors - mostly yellow and purple - and is about 6 inches across.  It doesn't hurt though, except sometimes when I sleep on that side.Crossing a gorge on a narrow wooden bridge with a rail on one side, as I turned to look at the water, I heard a big RIP sound.  A mesh side pocket on my home made pack caught on the rail and tore badly.  My two very important bags in that pocket fell out and miraculously landed on the little bridge instead of being lost in the water below.  I would have lost my identification, my AT mileage guide, and this email composing device, among lots of other little things.  Goldilocks loaned me a safety pin to close up the hole a bit, and I transferred some things to other pockets.  I hope I can find a sewing machine in a town pretty soon.We walked all afternoon on a fairly narrow, wooded ridge, looking down on Wautauga Lake and a couple of little towns.  Signs of Spring are barely showing up high, but down lower earlier in the day we saw all kinds of flowers and young green plants, and even flowering trees.  It was hot, too.From up on the ridge the valley fairly glowed with the green of Spring.  It was the classic pastoral scene: mountains surrounding a fertile valley, a town, and a river running through it.  It brought on conflicting feelings.  While I'm glad to be hiking, and moving along seeing new things - kind of a rootless gypsy lifestyle - part of me wanted to go down there, buy some land and settle in.  It's kind of a good feeling.There was no water on the ridge today.  Goldilocks and I went about nine miles this afternoon with no water, until we got to this campsite, which has a nice spring.  Boy, were we thirsty!There WAS plenty of water of another kind.  We walked right into a big thunderstorm.  Lots of lightning, some of it getting kind of close, and sheets of rain immediately soaking us to the skin.  I opted to leave my rain jacket to stay dry in my pack since it was pretty warm.  Hiking through the afternoon almost completely dried out my clothes.I sure am glad to be sleeping in the woods tonight, on the soft forest duff.  Much nicer than a shelter or hiker bunkhouse.Another decent mileage day tomorrow will put us not too far out of Damascus so we can walk in Sunday morning.Good night.