Date: 2012-05-24
From: Jenny Knob Shelter

To: Dismal Falls
Miles today: 8.2
Weather: overcast clouds

The girls and Baxter left at 7:30.  They got up early and were on the trail before I even rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.  They just waved goodbye.  We didn't get any rain last night so my shelter gamble didn't really pay off.  Plus, there were animals running around in the forest all night.  Sleep quality on a scale of one to ten would have ranked right around five.  Note that I chose that number specifically so that I wouldn't have to specify which was better: one or ten.  I left at 830.  I was feeling sluggish and Knoxville passed me very early on during a steep uphill; that guy was trucking.  I met Peter Pan at the official 600-mile marker.  She had camped out with two other folks right on the marker the night before and was rolling up her tent when I came upon them.  I saw a second marker a mule away made out of twigs.  I thought it was odd at the time but I know exactly how that sort of thing could happen now.  I then hiked with Hambone for quite a ways and although he is faster than me, I kept up and then led quick so we could talk.  It is more rare than you would think to meet people I really enjoy talking with.  It is easy to find interesting folks but not too many people have it all together.  The miles flew by and we came across this long wooden suspension bridge.  There was a hiker fishing off the top but his methods needed practice if he was going to catch any of the small trout in there.  He could possibly catch a carp if he weighted his line (looked like 10-lb test) but that is still a fairly optimistic assessment.  We arrived at Trent's Grocery after a half-mile road walk and caught up with the girls coming around the corner.  This is a small mini-mart sized roadside establishment that has a grill, a deep-fryer, and a pizza oven.  We ordered in shifts so that somebody could keep Baxter distracted from needing to see PMo at all times.  This quality is great for a dog that can sense the difference between safety and danger but Baxter seems to tend more toward the side of personal separation anxiety than guard dog.  We all were able to eat lunch and Anna showed her true hiker colors by ordering a side of tots and a corn dog to accompany her meal.  We did our resupply and figured out how to do laundry.  Six bucks a load seems steep but clean clothes are priceless after a five day stretch.  They smell clean for half a day, then you don't them because they don't have a smell, then they smell bad.  After awhile, you stop smelling the hiker funk that has permeated your clothing.  When you can start to smell them again, you know its about time to do the wash.  While we waited, we made new friends and played Oh Hell with Peter Pan, Tall Oaf, and Xango out under a big Cottonwood in the grass.  Many smiles were shared but it eventually became time to get hiking.  Tall Oaf went into the store and came out with a drink for the road in a glass bottle.  He made a statement about there being a trash can at the trail head.  I went in and grabbed a Boylan's Root Beer for the road too.  We had a few more things to do prior to departure and wished the other group happy trails.  When we got to the trailhead I realized what Tall Oaf had meant.  There wasn't a trash can by the trailhead but instead a pile of trash.  I can only assume that Tall Oaf left his bottle right on top because when we arrived there was the exact bottle he had purchased, where before there had not been one.  This meant that I was packing glass into the woods for a few days.  I really liked this guy but my opinion was soured by his supposed irresponsible action.  Stuff like this makes all of us hikers look bad.  We hiked in a few miles and Anna decides that she needs to pop a squat.  Out of all of the places she could have chosen, she picked a place with a nice coiled-up light green, brown, and grey snake.  There wasn't a rattler and the eyes were wrong but that will definitely get your heart beating.  We continued on and took a blue-blazed side trail down to the Dismal Falls.  From the sound of it, you know that it is either going to be a fantastic set of falls that needs a bad name to keep people away or it will entirely live up to it's name.  After trekking through dense thickets of Mountain Laurel we came out into a clearing walking on big slabby grey granite.  This wide lazy river comes around a bend, gets focused, and flows over submerged granite to abruptly form a twenty-foot by thirty-foot waterfall.  There were tall pine on the other side of the bank and we soaked up every photon of direct sunlight we could before the clouds and trees gave us darkness.  The ominous clouds were constantly shifting and I was sure it was going to dump on us.  We figured out a way to get everyone under my large rainfly by choosing a triangle of tree trunks.  By hanging the feet together and putting the tent in between the heads, we could all stay dry in the coming deluge.  No rain came but we did all sing the storm shield song, set to the Batman theme song.  Nuh nuh, nuh nuh, nuh nuh, nuh nuh, STORM SHIELD.