morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2005-07-19
From: Glencliff NH 

To: Perrisburg VA
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: broken clouds

This morning I woke up and saw that stewie had returned from the hospital in the middle of the night. He had been tested for Lyme disease and West Nile Virus and been given a prescription. He should find out the results soon, hopeully he dosen't start feeling worse while he is hiking. I wished he and Teach happy and safe hiking before leaving for Plymouth.I feel rather sad to be leaving. All the other hikers are excited to be heading into the Whites and to be just over 400 miles from Katadin. No one feels excited about hiking in VA. I get the impression from others that walking through VA is just a means to connect the southern mountains to the northern mountains. I don't expect there to be any thru-hikers down in Virginia while I am hiking, but the 'pack' of NOBOs should be right where I left off up north when I get back.I just made the bus in Plymouth, I ended up having to buy the ticket in Concord since there was no time to get it before the bus left. The bus brought me to the bus Station in Boston. From there I bought a ticket for the rest of my trip. It seems as though there is only one bus a day from Concord north in New Hampshire. I grabbed a schedual and made a mental note to keep that in mind when making my way back.The bus trip was basically broken into four, with about an hour layover in Boston, New York and Washington. Being on the bus seems weird to me, at least relative to the woods. I feels a bit defeted that you can drive the distance that it took me weeks to walk in less than a day. Seeing the licence plates on the vehucles from all the different states that the trail travels through brings back a lot of memories as well.My feet are swelling up again; after my last break/bus trip I expected it. I'm not realy sure how well my shoes will fit when I get back to the trail. I guess we will see. I am trying to rest as much as possible on the bus, but I just feel tired. Tommorrow might be a short day or a zero sleeping in the hostel in Perrisburg. I finally finished off the book that I was reading. I recommend [i] Life of Pi [/i] (by Yann Martel) to everyone. His writting style is easy to read, making the story seem simple on the surface, but there are many deep issues to contemptate if you take the time. I picked up two new books in Boston; [i] The Dharma Bums [/i] by Kerovac and [i] Buddhism A short Introduction [/i]. Both were rather impulsive purchases, I'm not really sure what drew me to them. Perhaps the need to fill my mind while hiking.
Date: 2005-07-21
From: Rice Field Shelter

To: War Spur Shelter 
Miles today: 25.0
Weather: few clouds

Well, tonight is going to be the first time that I sleep in a shelter alone. I got into the shelter with enough time to get to the next shelter but it would involve a touch of night hiking.I can't really say that much happened today other than walking and looking at trees. There was a ford of a creek today. The bridge had been taken out by a hurriane last fall and hasn't been replaced. I really liked it. The cool water made my feet feel great and happy. Right afterwards was a cooler full of trail magic Yeah! I thought that I would be too far behind the "crowd" to get anymore of that. (Thank-you Captain!) I had an ice cold fruit punch and a couple Snickers bites.I was feeling a bit happier today, probably because I was walking more. I find it hard taking breaks not at shelters or to refill on water. It seems sad knowing that you are not waiting for anyone to catch up or is there waiting to catch up with you. I really miss the dicking around that you do in a group. Reading every register in it's entirety has probably made me into a bitof a gossip. Although I am just on the receiving end of things.I suppose that Stewie found out the results of his disease tests today. Hopefully things turn out well (I'm not sure if that means that he has one of those illneses so he can get treated and get healthy fast or if it means it isn't Lyme or West Nile and therefore just a blip he needs to ride out).
Date: 2005-07-22
From: War Spur Shelter 

To: Pickle Branch Shelter 
Miles today: 28.1
Weather: few clouds

The weather in Virginia has been very bipolar. Last night it rained, was hazy this morning, the sun came out, then a few rain drops fell, it cleared off, it poured, the sun came out, it clouded over and thunder was rumbling then clear sky at dusk. Who knows what tommorrow will bring. An adventure anyways.The last of the rhododendron blooms are falling off the bushes now. They are white with light pink edges. They look very pretty scattered over the brown forest floor or floating down a stream. I want to string them on a peice of rope like a Hawaiian lei and wear them. Alas, pack weight dosenot alow me to carry extra string of the size required. Fortunatly the blooms do not seem to be affecting me alergy wise. I am still taking one 10mg Claritain a day, down from [i] bid [/i] when I was down south before.I wasn't feeling super great today. I kindof feel like I am getting a cold. I am starting to get a sore throat at the back and I feel constantly thirsty. My muscles are all stiff but thatmight just be due to miles and terain. My stomach didn't feel super hot this morning either. Maybe I am just a hypocondriact and feel sickbecause Stewie got sick. That would be better than actually being sick.
Date: 2005-07-23
From: Pickle Branch Shelter 

To: Campbell Shelter 
Miles today: 17.0
Weather: haze

Phsically I am only feeling worse today than I did yesterday. It would hardly be possible for my throat to be sorer and muscles ache more too. More than for any other cold-like illness that I have had on the order of the flu. My neck and back are especially sore. I feel constantly dehydrated and my appatite is definatly down. I have started to feel disoriented at times when hiking, sort of like I might fall over. Tonight I started getting a headache and I think that I might have a slight fever. Tommorrow in Daleville/Troutville I will have to investigate further. It seems as though I can hardly hike any more. I didn't drop the milage today purposefully, it was as far as I could walk.I went to the Homeplace Restaurant for dinner and it is a shame that I was not feeling better today since it is a homestyle AYCE. What happens is that they seat you, you choose between roast beef and ham as your second meat (or choose both) and if you want Pepsi or Dr. Pepper in addition to the lemonade and unsweetened iced tea on the table. Then about 10 seconds later they bring out fried chicken, eiter roast beef or ham, green beans, pinto beans, mashed potatoes, biscuits, gravy, coleslaw and veggie of the day (in my case corn). Then you just eat and eat and they re-fill any bowl that you empty. I ate three bowls of mashed potatoes as well as both meats, the buiscuits and some of the coleslaw. For dessert you get fruit cobbler (today cherry) with ice cream, again AYCE. All this food costs an adult a mere 12 dollars (including tax). It is no wonder thatthe place was full just after 4 and there had to be over 100 people waitng outside when I left at 5. This was the fullest that I had been on the whole trail. I wondered for a while if I was going to be able to ake it back to the trail without vomitting.Last hightlight of the day was going over McAfee's Knob. Besides the two terminii, I would guess that this is the photographed location on the AT. It took me an hour and a half, some duckt tape, a couple of rocks and a crock to get a few shots of myself on the outcropping of rock. But since I don't know when I will ever be back the time was worth it. It may have cost me getting to Lambert's field shelter, but an early night never killd anyone.
Date: 2005-07-24
From: Campbell Shelter 

To: Fullhardt Knob Shelter 
Miles today: 20.4
Weather: few clouds

This morning I got off to an earluy start and enjoyed an early morning walk along the Tinker Cliffs. The view from there is very good, although I don't feel like you can se McAffee's Knob from there. The weather today was quite hot although not as humid as two days ago. Still the walk down to US 220/Daleville seemed long and dry.At US 220 I walked north a bit to the large Kroger grocery store. It is a big store with a pharmacy and almost anything food item you might want including lots of orgnic and "health" foods. Stewie had warned me about the salad bar there. Everything is 5 dollars a pound and he almost ended up buying a pound of pudding. I got groceries to last five days plus a wack load of drugs.I got the usual generic Claratin that I have been taking since I discoverd that I was allergic to rhododendron and mountain laural. I figure when this package of 30 runs out I'll be in the woods of Maine and the vegitation will be like that of Northern Ontario and I won't suffer any allergies. I also got Tylenol Flu to try and cover up my illness. Back in Canada we have Tylenol Cold and Flu, which comes in little plastic containers of 25, 50 tablets etc. I thought it would be pretty straight forward to pick some up. Not so. It would seem as though in the Excited States of America there is one formulation called 'Tylenol Cold' and a separate but very similar formulation called 'Tylenol Flu'. Not only has one pill been split into two, each of these two had two separate forms; one for night and one for day. I stood ther comparing labels for 10 or 15 minutes before deciding on Tylenol Flu Daytime. It has a cough suppressant and since I cought during the day and night I th! ought it best. While I was at it I picked up some more vitamin I. I don't take it like vitamins but I find it fun to call it that.When I was about to leave I asked the lady at the customer service desk if there was a washroom that I could use. She just gave a blank look and said "a what?" It dawned on me that Stewie always made fun of me when I used that word for indoor privy, but I couldn't recall what he callde it instead. All I could think was "shit, I need an Canadian-American dictionary". Eventually I think I said "Eh ... restroom??" She pointed the way and I was soon on my way back to the trail ladden down with food and water.
Date: 2005-07-25
From: Fullhardt Knob Shelter 

To: Bryant Ridge Shelter 
Miles today: 26.8
Weather: few clouds

Today was a fantastic day. I got up early, trail was in good shape, there was water at appropriate distances along the trail, I got to swim, I had dinner by the creek, I am at a fantastic shelter and I got to swim. Did I mention that I got to swim? And that I am going to get to swim tommorrow?Swimming makes me so happy, even if it is in a little hole in a tiny creek. It is like a happy drug, or as Too Obtuse put it 'a positive addiction'. You kind of don't realize how much you love doing something until you have been away from it for a while. How could I forget about you swimming? How could I let those delts, pecks, bi and triceps disapear? Calves? Who needs am? Sad to admit but the little bit of chlorine smell from the AquaMira makes me happy. Oh swimming pools...Encountered the Blue Ridge Parkway/Skyline Drive for the first time today. It seems rather odd walking so near to a road for so long And too cross it so often. Sometimes I felt like cars passing by could throw Tim Horton cups out the window and hit me on the head with them. Of course they wouldn't be Tim Hortons cups, but what ever kind of coffee everone drinks. I can't imagine that anyone would drink anything other than Tim Hortons coffee. A Canadian wouldn't be caught dead in a Dunkin Donuts. It pains me to even type it.I felt a lot better today. Wether it wa sthe two shorter days to rest, the drugs, me getting better or a combination of all of them I don't know. Maybe I just caught something from one of the city dwellers on the bus as I travelled south. A more comforting thought than Lyme Disease. I figure I'll get tested when I am finished anyhow just to be safe.The a/c was broken, but other than that it was a fantastic day at the office!
Date: 2005-07-26
From: Bryant Ridge Shelter 

To: Johns Hollow Shelter 
Miles today: 26.6
Weather: clear sky

I got off to a good start this morning but by the late morning the blues were starting to get to me. I lagged all afternoon feeling lonely hiking all alone. The trail is suprisingly empty. I don't see many people during the day, and hardly ever stay with other people at shelters. I thought that there would be lots of people out. There are some Scout Groups and camp groups, but no family groups to speak of. I thought that there would be since itis great physical fitness, you are out in the wild, there are some great views and you get a free place to camp.I went swimming off the James River Foot bridge, but it didn't seem all that exciting swimming by myself. There really isn't much in the way of bugs here other than the no-see-ums. I don't really understand how such a little bugs can cause so much pain when they are bitting you. I still maintain that blackflies are devil.
Date: 2005-07-27
From: Johns Hollow Shelter 

To: Hog Camp Gap 
Miles today: 26.0
Weather: few clouds

Feeling pretty flat emotionally right now. It seems like the only thing that varies is the trail. I wonder if today will be another one of those days where I got 24 without talking. I've had two in Virginia already. I am feeling impatient about getting to Waynesboro. I wish that I was getting there today, but it is a couple of big-mile days away. I guess it dosen't help things that the only "thru-hikers" I have meet while I have been out here have been the yellow-blazing-no-intention-of-hiking-the-whole-trail type of hikers. On a positive note, I passed 1500 miles this morning. By the time I get to Waynesboro I will have hiked the equivalent of Springer to Mt. Greylock in Massachusetts. Hiking out of order like this is tough. It hink that if I were doing it over again I would say screw it to off trail commitments. I had been thinking that it would be a great next hiking adventure to do the PCT, but after hiking alone for the past week I am starting to have my doub! ts.As I was climbing up Bald Mountain it started to pour. It seems strange to me that it could be sunny all day and then just start to pour. I guess that the humidity just builds until it gets to 100%. I walked into the Cow Camp Gap shelter. There were some boy Scouts there all huddled i the shelter. Another solo long distance hiker also arrived just before me. The Scout leader named Larry told the older gentleman that they could make room for him in the shelter eventhough it was against the Boy Scout rules to allow other people to sleep in the same area as the boys. I overheard him say "I have a problem with this co-ed situation", then he came over and told me that I coudn't stay in the shelter because it was against Boy Scout regulations. After all it was first come first serve. I told him that the shelter wasn't a Boy Scout shelter so he coudn't impose his rules on others. The ATC dosen't have rules againt co-ed sleeping arangements in shelters and that furthermore groups are requested not to monopolize shelters. The other gentleman who was hiking tried to tell Scouter Larry that he couldn't impose his rules on others and that I could sleep against he wall and he would sleep on the otherside of me to separate me from the Scouts. I got ready to leave since Scouter Larry was beling so rude and was making me upset. This is really not what I needed at the end of one of my worst days on the trail. The other hiker was trying to tell Scouter Larry that it wasn't aceptable to send a someone out in the dark and rain. Larry was happy to send an upset young lady out into the rain and mist as the sun was setting.I was going to write a long entry about how I hated Boy Scouts and that they are chauvanistic jerks but I got down to Hog Camp Gap and cmped out with some really nice Boy Scouts that were very appologetic that they had already cleaned up from dinner because they would have given me some. Recently it has semed that the trail is infested with Boy Scout Troops. I doubt that the Shannandoahs will be any better.
Date: 2005-07-28
From: Hog Camp Gap 

To: Harpers Creek Shelter 
Miles today: 22.0
Weather: overcast clouds

This morning I slept in a bit. The tought of packing up a wet tent wasn't very appealling. I got off about 8 o'clock this morning. Walking wasn't very exciting today, it was so foggy out today that I couldn't see more than fifty feet in front of me. I passed the Priest mountain this afternoon and missed all the views.At the shelter tonight I stayed with a group of six guys. Four were finished high school and were starting college in the fall, the other two were juniors in high school. I asked if that meant they were in grade 10, they told me that it meant they were in 11th grade. Then they looked at me and said where are you from? When I said I was from Canada two of them said "I thought so, you talk funny". They pushed over and made room for me. Much funner than the Boy Scouts last night
Date: 2005-07-29
From: Harpers Creek Shelter 

To: Waynesboro VA 
Miles today: 27.3
Weather: light rain

I slept in a bit today, more for the benefit of the others in the shelter than anything else. It was still cloudy out when I got up, the area enveloped in mist. The trail quickly headed uphill towards the Three Ridges. The trail was under cloud cover untill I got up to the northern ridge. At a overlook just past the summet I got an absolutely fantastic view of all the ridges in the surrounding area. All the valleys were filled with clouds and the wind was pushing them around; up and down the valley or over the ridge. It seemed magical the way that the senery was constantly changing.The trail after the Three Ridges is pretty much flat. It slowly goes up to the top of Humpback Mountain and then slowly back down to Rockfish Gap. At Rockfish Gap I got a hitch into the Kroger in Waynesboro. I had AYCE Chinese at the restaurant beside the Kroger. It was the typical Cinese buffet, Stewie wouldhave definatly ben disapointed at the absense of any tofu, but other than that it was much better than the Chinese buffet that we ate at more than a month and a half ago in Pearisburg. I ate for so long that it was starting to get dark out when I left. I walked down the street a few blocks to the YMCA to register. The Y in Waynesboro will let you camp out by the river for free. Thereis abig open grassy space and a port-a-potty there. Usually you can pay 2 dollars to have a shower (towel and little bar of soap) but a trail angel had arranged for all hikers to get a free shower during the month of July. The building was closing in 40 minutes so I decided to have a shower in the morning. I went down to the river, set up my tent and went to sleep.
Date: 2005-07-30
From: Waynesboro VA 

To: Calf Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 7.0
Weather: broken clouds

This morning I woke up early so I headed down to Kroger to get my resupply. I returned to the camping area and took down my tent. Next stop was the Y where I took a long luxureous shower. There is nothing nicer than cleaning 11 days worth of trail dirt off without having to rush or worry about other hikers wanting to use the shower. Being clean I took the opportunity to put fresh contacts in. I was actually the only person in the changeroom the whole time I was there.Next stop was the post office, where I forwareded some mail (eqipment) back to Glencliff and got new batteries for my headlamp as well as the next set of maps from my bounce box. I sent it on to Glencliff as well. I think that I should only be in the south for a bit over a week more. After I was finished at the PO I walked to the laundramat to washmy cloths. While I was there I was asked out on a dinner date, but besides being freeked out I am anxious to get back on the trail.Last stop in town was at the Outfitter. The day before I noticed that one of my pole tips had broken off, I also needed a new bite-valve for my bladder and I need to start looking for new shoes. I have Komperdell poles and was worried that I wouldn't be able to find parts in Leki-saturated America. The guy at the Outfitter was able to fit the Leki tips on my poles but I had to buynew baskets, since they attach diferently on the two types of poles. I have size 11 womens shoes and pretty narrow feet which make it hard to find shoes. The ones that I have are getting pretty worn and I would feel better heading into the Whites with tread on the soles of my shoes. Shoe people always want to try and put me into an 8-and-a-half or 9 men's, but I think being a bit of a pain and insisting on finding women's shoes is worth it. I don't want nasty blisters from ill-fitting shoes. The Outfitter is going to phone Montrail Monday to see it they have any in stock that they could send! me up the trail. I just hav to find a phone to call Monday afternoon. Rockfish Gap Outfitters are awesome though, even if they didn't hav my shoe size in stock, they phoned the Outfitters in Front Royal and Harpers Ferry to see if they had shoes for me. The outfiter in Harpers Ferry had some shoes in womens 11 but different models. I don't really want to risk not liking them but being stuck with them so I think that I would prefer to order the same ones as I have.Town-induced laziness kept me from hiking very far today. I just feel unmotivated starting late, hiking and thinking "so far I have walked 1 mile". I find it much more comforting to think "Hey it's dinner and I've already done 20, I'll just coast a few more". I'm a very 'race from the front' kind of swimmer, so I don't find it suprising that I am that sort of hiker. Early to bed, early to rise and I'll have myself a big day tomorrow.
Date: 2005-07-31
From: Calf Mountain Shelter

To: Flattop Mountain Dispersed Campsite
Miles today: 29.3

The trail was still imersed in fog/clouds when I awoke this morning. I got off to an early start as the sun was rising. The trail in the Shenandoahs is not very exciting. It dosen't go up or down very quickly and you are never far from Skyland Drive. I stopped at the Loft Mountain Campground this afternoon to get some post cards and snacks. I could have gone to a Wayside to get hot food, but I figured that I would do that tommorrow when I need to phone the outfitter in Waynesboro back about getting new shoes.It is funny how they call thehiking trails in the park "Backcountry". Each time you leave a road or a campground they have this little silver coloured sign that tells you that you are in the Backcountry. I realy think that they should give it another name. I think that you would be hard-pressed to get a mile from a road, campground or other man-made object here.At dinner the clouds and fog blew away, just as quickly as they blew in five days ago. I got my first view in as many days at an overlook on Skyline Drive. The panoramic views here are just incredible, answers my questions as to why this park exists. There was a beutiful sunset a few hours later. I look forward to the sun rise tommorrow morning. Hopefully this dosen't mean an immediate return to the uber hot temperatures.