Date: 2003-04-14
From: Hogback Ridge Shelter

To: Erwin, TN
Miles today: 11.2
Weather: few clouds

Monday morning (Apr. 14) we got up and walked into Erwin. The night before my knee hurt so badly during the night that I ended up taking one of my emergency percocets (left over from surgery) at 4:00 am so Flanders took some of my weight for the walk into Erwin. BOY, OH BOY is a light pack nice!        We had lots of downhill to get into Erwin and eventually tired of all the switchbacks. We had a contest ¢¢How many switchbacks are left before Erwin?¢ Ned guessed 11 ¢ the game was not his idea so he was not taking it seriously, and I guessed 4 ¢ I really wanted to be right. Ned immediately declared himself ¢official switchback score keeper¢ and began counting every slight curve in the trail as a switchback, so he could get the count back to 11. As the official scorekeeper he also claimed the authority to disqualify me for keeping my own (true) count. Needless to say, I was disqualified (and beaten with a hiking pole). Still, regardless of the Flanders Foolery, the true count was 9 so he won anyway.        Finally we found ourselves at the Nolichucky River. We bought fuel and Snickers from Uncle Johnny¢s Hostel and then hitched a ride with the famous Miss Janet to McDonalds. Miss Janet has pretty much devoted her life to serving hikers. She has opened her house as a hostel, takes her fee using the honor system, and cooks delicious food ¢ we heard. We were glad to meet her.        After pigging out at McDonalds, we walked to the post office and then the library, where we called my Erwin second cousin, Mary Beth. She wasn¢t home, so we wandered around town for a while. We saw the name ¢Boyd¢ (my mother¢s maiden name) all around town. Boyd St., Boyd Furniture Company. Surprisingly, I am directly related to these Boyds. We wandered into a drug store, where we began talking to the 2 women working at the counter. Turns out Mary Beth sometimes works in the drugstore and they told us her address and how to get to her house. So we headed toward her house. On the way we passed Miss Janet¢s house, so we stopped in and caught up on the adventures of Crystal and Josh (Hat Passer & PopTop), but we didn¢t stay long since half the people staying at Miss Janet¢s had the hiker plague (terrible flu). Once we got to Mary Beth¢s we sat on her swing and read the paper until she got home.        The ladies at the drug store were right ¢ she is a lovely woman! She energetically opened her house to un, and once we were clean, she took us for a Mexican dinner at Amigos. The next day she was leaving for the beach, so she turned us over to her son, Marcus. He drove us to the grocery store on his way to class. We spent the rest of that day getting our affairs in order, wandering around town, and eating ice cream. We ate dinner at a fantastic little restaurant called The Elms, came home and watched Austin Powers followed by The Daily Show. It was a very relaxing Tuesday.        Wednesday morning Marcus dropped us off at the trail on his way to class, but not before stopping at a local bakery so that we could cram ourselves full of cream filled donuts. (These were in addition to the breakfast of eggs and pulled pork leftover from The Elms).        With full packs and full bellies, we headed into the woods. We had gone to the grocery store hungry and had way too much food. Our packs were so heavy I was huffing and puffing before we even started up the mountain. We walked for a while with some beautiful creeks that reminded Ned of Nature Camp, and then we went straight up the mountain ¢ this reminded me of how much weight I had on my back. We went over Beauty Spot which had been freshly burned and we ran out of water because our packs were so heavy we didn¢t carry enough. Finally I convinced Ned that 16.5 miles to the next shelter was too much and we quit in Deep Gap having done 12 miles.        While we were cooking we met Eli, a journalist for the Nashville City Paper. He was an interesting guy doing a page per week for the paper on his AT journey. He had attended W&L, so he and Ned talked quite a while about Lexington, VA.        After Eli had moved on Fremont arrived with enough adventure stories to keep him talking until after sunset, when he, too, hiked on. Only Scott with shin splints (Ned let him borrow his poles for a while) stayed at the same spot as us.                                                                Chicken Feet