Date: 2019-06-16
From: James Fry shelter

To: Super 8 at Carlisle 
Miles today: 20.0

Day 84I had lots of ¢fun¢ on today¢s trail. In the morning it started as easy going. The cellphone signal has been great. So even I planed  to do more than 20 miles today, I was still very relaxed and had a long video call with my sister and parents. Then I reached the Rocky Ridge. It is true to the name. I called it rocky ridge, rocky maze! At least on two locations I had to remove my backpack and camera, put my hiking poles aside to pull myself up or get down on the trail. It¢s only with the help of those white blazes that I could find my way out of the maze. Sometimes I still need to stop  for a moment, looked carefully around, then made sense out of the code by white blaze. So this was the real fun part of the day.The reason that I had to make it a 20 miler was because in the last 10 miles, the A.T. goes through farmlands and highways. There was no good camping option. So I had to make it to a hotel. By the time I left the small town of Boiling Springs, the rain started. There was still 8.5 miles to the hotel. The rain came in full force. In just 5 minutes, my pants and boots were soaked. The trail became a small muddy river. The previous muddy sections became various sized mud pools. At multiple pools there was no way to go around them. So I had no choice but waled right into the ankle deep muddy pools. This reminded me of my child time. During summer, Beijing usually had late afternoon showers every day. One of my favorite play was to wear a pair of plastic sandals and splashed around in the rain pools, of course, without being seen by my parents. So to make the best out of the muddy situation, I sang silly songs about my favorite activity in the past. I just slipped and slid through the trail for about 4 hours. This made the 20 miler day much longer than I anticipated.The last ¢fun¢ was in my last mile of hike. An old guy appeared abruptly in front of me. He carried an old gray backpack which looked as if made out of canvas. He¢s tall, has long white hair and long white beard. He has a long eagle beak nose. Something about his skin color made me wonder if he¢s a real person. The skin looked like porcelain. He spoke to me in a rather fast tune that made me hard to understood fully. He asked me about camping situation in the next many miles before the shelter, which was not good. Then he asked me if I came from far away, and if I will stay in super 8 motel tonight. He had met three other hikers who all will stay in Super 8. Since it¢s been late, he sensed that I wanted to reach the motel as soon as possible, he let me go. I could tell that he wanted to ask a lot more questions. I also wanted to ask him where would he stay tonight since there is no good camping option for more than 10 miles and the nearest town to find a hotel in his direction would be 7 miles away. But in a hurry, I didn¢t chat more with him. After I parted with him, I kept thinking that I might missed the opportunity with knowing a true forest wizard. As a punishment, in the last half mile in the woods, I walked right into mosquitos kingdom. In 30 minutes, mosquitoes swarmed around me. My hands and caps danced violently around my face, neck, shoulder, back and arms, trying to slap them away. When I finally reach the highway that led to the Super 8 motel, I had bitten for more than 20 times by those hungry mosquitoes!Such a ¢fun¢ hike in the Father¢s Day. I did see many fathers and kids hiking together today. So happy Father¢s Day!