Date: 2008-06-25
From: Fullhardt Knob Shelter

To: Mills Gap
Miles today: 14.9

First off a shout out to Needles, wish you were still out here buddy. Everyone says hello and come back. Woke up very leisurely close to 9:30. Cornelius was actually the first one up today, and got all of our bear lines down for us. Got going and my shin is feeling a little tight, which is starting to scare me. But, I slowed down and stopped to stretch a lot, and its feeling a lot better. I stopped at a small creek to get some water, which tastes really bad. I think my filter might be starting to grow mold or something. I could tell the rest of the crew is not far behind since I can hear Cornelius singing Pete Yorn coming down the mountain. Someone said that we should be getting close to the 1/3rd mark of the AT. We pulled out the guidebook to find that the creek we were sitting at was exactly 1/3rd of the total mileage of the AT. To celebrate, Cornelius produced a warm beer, leftover from the previous night's Eddie Murphy festivities. Cornelius also decided that this would be the perfect place to continue his Les Straud (host of survivorman, much manlier than Bear Grylls) training by eating a live fish. We rigged up a net using a bandanna, but our first catch happened to be a crawfish. As survival situations don't allow for pickiness, Cornelius went ahead and ate the Crawfish. Following that, we were able to catch a minnow, which he also ate. I will not delve into the details, as I will try to post a movie of it soon. We left that spot and kept hiking back up to the ridge. We stopped at our first crossing of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Parkway is classified as a national park, similar to the Natchez Trace Parkway of Mississippi, and runs from North Carolina to Shenandoah National Park, where it becomes Skyline Drive. The Parkway and Skyline Drive were once where the Appalachian Trail itself ran. However, when the Parkway was conceived, the trail was rerouted to make room for it. Because of this, many of the most spectacular views are found on the parkway rather than the Trail. It only took one look down the parkway and then back at the AT to decide that we might try walking the parkway for a few miles. The great thing about our group -Mule, Cornelius, Dr. Z, and I- is that we all came out here for the same thing, adventure, specifically one of our own choosing. Of course, we could stay on the trail, and walk every last inch of the "AT", but if that's not the most enjoyable route, then why should we do it? This is not to say that we are not still walking the entire length from Georgia to Maine (it's still a long, long way), but rather we are walking it on our own terms. To many of the purists and "Trail Gods" out there, this is severely frowned upon, but to tell the family secret, I didn't come out here for their approval. Besides, if we did things the way they were supposed to be done, we probably wouldn't be out here in the first place. We're all having a great time, finding new adventures every step of the way; and we wouldn't have it any other way. And to reiterate it, these views from the parkway were absolutely gorgeous, and it was nice to have a change of scenery from being surrounded by trees all day. Not to mention the hiking along the parkway was much faster. The AT crosses this parkway countless times, so if the AT looked more inviting, then we would just jump back on and hike on it for awhile. We finally decided to stop at a really nice overlook just off of the parkway and make camp. We built a fire and ate the 24 hot dogs that we had packed out of town. I think we all felt way beyond stuffed. After dinner we threw the bear lines and then got in bed. About 3 a.m. something large was skirting the edge of the camp and woke both me and Mule up. I turned my headlamp on and looked around for a while, but didn't see anything. And for the record, Cornelius moved his head to the side of his tent opposite from the mesh.