Date: 2007-03-07
To: On Schedule for Amicalola Falls
Miles today: 0.0

7 March 2007My old hiking buddy, Wayne Hammerstrom, who is living somewhat vicariously through my adventures while preparing for his own retirement, forwarded a blog address for the nephew of another friend of ours who is already out on the AT, having left Amicalola Falls over a week ago. Josh Runyan's 2007 Appalachian Trail Journal, part of Trail Journals' backpacking and hiking journals can be found at . I could have spent my winter figuring out how to put this stuff into a blog, but as usual, I've wasted away the winter with frivolity. At some point in the future, I may get my old-style Kodachrome slides scanned into my computer, posted on the Web, and figure out how to do all that other stuff that less Luddite-inclined folks have already figured out. Hell, I may even buy a digital camera at some point. (Right after Kodak stops making and selling Kodachrome 64 slide film, probably.) As it stands, you will all have to read my updates from the trail over this primitive email method. My biggest update to report at this time is that I have secured the bus tickets to take us to Georgia, and arranged for a ride to Amicalola Falls State Park. We're hopping the bus on Friday, March 16, at 11:25 am. The bus will wander through Milwaukee, change in Chicago, and then on through Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee to Georgia. Meeting us at the bus stop will be Joey Shonka, AT Thru-hiker 2006, who arrived at Katahdin on October 10. I met Joey in Bland, Virginia last June 13 on my way to pick up Jeannine from the trail. Joey, aka Polar Bear, was packing up a resupply at the IGA store with Seed and Monsoon, two other hikers who had shared a shelter with Jeannine the night before (her last night on the trail). I hauled them all, along with their two dogs, back to the trail on my way over the hill to pick up Jeannine in Bastian, VA.We picked up our new sleeping bags at REI last Saturday, along with several water filter canisters, so that Tina won't need to run over there on short notice to buy us a spare. (They do such a bang-up job of purifying water that they tend to crud up fairly quickly, and last year we were forced to borrow filters for a time because of resupply issues.) I washed the car, hopefully for the last time this spring?, although we've still got scads of snow to melt in the next few days, along with a (few) predictable March/April storms. I still need to finish the tax returns in the next few days, but I have prepared envelopes for Tina to use to send us maps along the way. That process provided me with probable resupply points along the trail. I won't guarantee anything at this point, but feet willing and the creeks don't rise, we will be stopping by the post offices at Fontana Dam, NC 28733 about April 4, Hot Springs, NC 28743, April 14 and Damascus, VA, May 3. That's an ambitious schedule for a couple of old geezers, so don't be surprised if we don't manage to keep to it, but if you're like me and enjoy surprising thru-hikers with care packages or keeping track of their progress, that's what I've got for you on March 7. If you do intend on sending anything, address mail to AT Thru-hiker so-and-so, c/o General Delivery, and include an estimated date of arrival on the mail piece.