Date: 2006-04-08
From: Temple Hill Gap

To: Miss Janet's House (Erwin, TN)
Miles today: 3.9
Weather: light rain

4-08-06Temple Hill Gap to Miss Janet¢s House (Erwin, TN)3.9 milesIt had rained all night last night, but thanks to my AT acquired awesome tent skills, we stayed warm and dry and so did our gear. When I got out of the tent to grab our food bags, there was a light drizzle, and then that cleared right up.We had gotten up at around 7AM, ate a dry breakfast of a couple of trail bars to save time, packed up, and were hitting the mud by 8oclock. The sky cleared up so that by the time we got to the first viewpoint for Erwin the town was visible. Shanae's first stop into town had arrived. We knocked out those last few miles pretty quickly and made into town by about 10AM. Packs off, we headed over to Uncle Johnny's, as it was called, to get a snack and use the payphone to call Miss Janet, owner of Ms. Janet's house, the hostel where we were going to stay at.I couldn't get a hold of her when I called, and sly old Uncle Johnny, quite the salesman, was talking about how he had private cabins and gave Shanae the key to one to go check it out. I was very annoyed with this, as I already knew I wanted to stay at Ms. Janet's, and this was just a ply on Uncle Johnny's part. The room looked nice and all, and was private, so Shanae, in all her tiredness and laziness, tried to convince me to stay here instead of Ms. Janet's house.I refused, as Uncle Johnny's did not have laundry, internet, our mail drops, wasn't located in town, and didn't come as highly recommended as Ms. Janet's. Shanae put on her mad face and tried harder to convince me (there may have been a bit of whining involved), but I wasn't giving in. We finally left shortly after that to cross the bridge and hike the three something miles into town.We strolled through residential areas, soaking in these new views and considering our options for food once we got into town (or at least I was). An old guy named Bernie Cole pulled over and gave us a ride for the last half mile, and we didn't even have our thumbs out. How wonderful the kindness of strangers!At Ms. Janet¢s house were Casey Jones and Doodle, Uber-dude, Low Key, 4-today, Saspirilla, Crumbs, Bushwhacker, Redneck, Texas, Pondwater, Snickers, and apparently Da Bear and the Tortoise were out doing a 19-mile slackpack today, and Ajax and Train were doing a 27 mile one. We said hi to everybody and then set about to all the important activities of showering, laundry, and locating our food drops.I didn't even meet Ms. Janet until noon or so; she had been busy dropping other people off this morning. She was about to take people over to Pizza Hut for the lunch buffet (all-you-can-eat!) so I tried to get Shanae moving faster because I was starving. I had already taken a shower and was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and Shanae was out of the shower and dressed, but seemed to have one reason or another why she couldn't go at that moment, but in the end she came.Casey Jones, Doodle, Texas, Shanae, and I all piled into Ms. Janet's huge van, destination: food heaven. We got there and immediately set upon the pizza and salads like a group of vultures on fresh meat. Bushwhacker joined us a little later, along with Ms. Janet and one of her daughters. We stuffed ourselves silly, and were taken back to the house with very happy stomachs.When we got back, we checked our emails, and Shanae found out that she got the assistant ship from NC State, meaning they will pay for her tuition and give her a salary for being a teaching assistant! It was just the good news she had been looking for. We celebrated with a couple of hard ciders that previous resident hikers had left on the back patio. Uber-dude and the four girls left to get back on the trail today, but everyone else was staying for another night.While I doing some online journal writing on the computer, Casey Jones came in with his food drop package. Apparently, some interesting looking pink plastic balls on a string had been found in his food package that he had mailed to himself from the last town. He wanted my opinion on what they were; my first thoughts were that they were some kind of sex toy. If his trail name wasn't Casey Jones, he might have gotten a good one right there and then. That mystery is still unsolved.I talked to Ms. Janet for a bit and I heard that an AT hiker named Phoenix died while hiking in the Smokies. He had just fallen asleep in a shelter and had not woken up. I had meet him right in the beginning part of my hike, he was the one who had freaked me out about wearing sandals hiking, saying my arches would fall out. He was only sixty, but I have a firm belief if there was a way he would have liked to die, it would have been on the AT.Ms. Janet got a call from Tortoise towards the end of the day; her message was that her and Bear had gotten separated on the trail, she had waited for him for an hour at the last shelter and he hadn't showed up, he wasn't feeling well, and she was cold and wet and needed to keep moving. It was raining and fairly chilly, so we set in motion a rescue plan if needed to get Bear out of there. A couple of us were going to go up the mountain to walk down towards the shelter, and others were going to walk up to the shelter, hoping that one group would encounter Bear.Aunt Janet's sister was helping out, so Texas and I hopped into her truck to go driving up the mountain. As we ascended, it got incredibly foggy and rainy, and it was cold, 35 degrees or so. We stopped at potential camping spots and yelled for anybody who might know where Bear was. It was a nerve-racking mountain-side one lane road we were driving on, and it took us a while to even get up there. On the way down we got a call that Bear was ok and getting picked up right now; he had made it into town. We got back to a little Sonic party in the works, and I went to get my own Sonic food to join in. The Sonic girl apparently has a thing for hikers, and she gave me this big hot fudge sundae for free, which everybody had to give me grief for when I got back, because they had all gotten these rinky-dink little sundaes. I thought it was pretty funny. I had also gotten a malt vanilla shake, cherry limeade, a chicken wrap, and mozzarella sticks. Filled with greasy goodness, Shanae and I headed for a real bed! Blessed sleep...