Date: 2013-05-16
From: Stealth Camp @ Views to the west

To: Campsite by Creek
Miles today: 15.8

Woohoo! Today I passed 600 miles!I woke up in the middle of the night to pee (Hello?! A gallon of Powerade!). The stars were bright in the sky. The toenail sliver of the moon glowed orange-ish yellow just above the far ridge. The sky was a brownish yellow. There must be a town nearby. The mountains were a purplish black. There was a scattering of lights from farms in the valley below. Their lights formed a shape that resembled the Big Dipper. A Big Dipper in the sky mirrored by one on the valley floor. I stood there for a long moment, feeling the cool night air seeping through the sleeves of my top. I wanted to take it all in. The wind picked up, so I unzipped the tent and crawled in.Dreamer got up a little after 6. I was awake, but I stayed tucked in. I could see her trying to quietly take the bear bags down, but she was struggling, so I decided to speak up. We packed up and had breakfast sitting on the edge of the hill overlooking the valley. The Big Dippers had disappeared. Instead the trees glowed like pink and yellow curly wigs.We set off by 7:40 in high spirits. We didn't see any campsites for the next several miles, so we felt grateful we had stopped last night when we did. We reached the road and walked on asphalt. It felt wrong. We stopped on an overpass bridge with traffic whizzing along the interstate below us. Everything was moving so fast. I waved at the cars and drivers as they disappeared below us. Some waved back, some honked their horns. I was glad to be where I was.There was some confusion when we reached the other side. A small trail curved off the road and into the woods. There were no white blazes immediately apparent. I was just about to head off on the trail when we saw Wind walking up from the road about 100 yards away. He yelled up that that was not the trail, the road was. We walked to meet him. His timing couldn't have been better! He was heading to Trail Days. We wished him well.Finally, we saw a white blaze heading into the woods on the opposite side of the road, we turned and started climbing. It was a heck of a climb. I got to the top of the hill and walked a few yards down the flattened trail. There was a hunter decked out in cameo with his gun laying on the ground directly facing the trail. He was sitting less than four feet from the trail. I could have poked him with my hiking pole from where I stood. He turned towards me as I walked up. He was turkey hunting and wanted to know if we were on government land. I told him that we were either in a national forest or in a national wilderness, but I wasn't sure which. He asked if he could hunt there. I said I didn't know. He said that he had seen the silver paint on the trees and a well trodden path and guessed that it led somewhere. I told him that they were white blazes and he was hunting right beside the Appalachian Trail. He said, he was from the next county over and didn't really know the woods and trails, but he figured that if it was government land then he was okay to hunt there. He said that he guessed that I probably wasn't a hunter, but that I should get off the trail, get a concealed hand-gun license, buy me a gun and learn how to shoot it before I came back out. There were crazy, bad people. And if they pulled a gun on me all I could do was try to run away. How many times had I had this conversation since I had expressed interest in hiking the AT? At least 100 times. It never seemed to occur to him that HE was one of the biggest dangers on the trail. A hunter, not knowing where he was, hunting less than 4 FEET from one of the most popular hiking trails in the US during the peak of hiking season. I wondered later what he would have said to that. I wish I had thought at the time to ask. Instead I walked away. He picked up his turkey call and started calling turkeys. When Dreamer passed, I guess he realized the popularity of the trail (8 other hikers had passed between us), so he was headed out. But not before she got a lecture on the importance of snake-bite kits. The air got hot and stagnant, and my mood had grown foul thinking of the hunter. I needed water, and the closest water source was .6 off the trail. I dropped my pack and hoped that Dreamer would know where I went. There were lots of switchbacks, but it was my only option. Eight hikers and a dog passed. Dreamer and I connected, but I was feeling agitated, and I needed to hike. I set off again. I quickly caught up with the hiker with the dog. They were resting on the side of the trail. As soon as I passed, the dog jumped up and was ready to hike. The hiker was not. But he came anyway. The hiker kept pulling at the leash, but the dog was too strong. The faster I hiked, the faster the dog hiked. He was only a few inches from my ankles. I could hear and feel him panting on the back of my legs. Ooooooooohhhhh.... I tried to go faster, but the dog kept on pace. I flew down the trail, up the hills, around the corners. I felt like I was hiking in fast forward, followed closely by a dog and with a hiker dangling at the end of a leash. I looked for a place to stop, to let them pass. The first spot was full of a group of 6 section hikers. There filled the pull off and flooded into the trail. I stomped through them, dog and hiker apologizing (I'm not sure if they were apologizing to me or to the other group). A quarter of a mile later, I saw another spot. I pulled aside, the dog and hiker passed. They walked 50 feet down the trail and the dog collapsed in a heep of tongue and slobber. I groaned. I decided to take a break to wait for Dreamer and hope they would move on. They were perfectly nice, but I was feeling surly and in no mood make myself be nice. Finally they moved on. Dreamer arrived. I conveyed my annoyance. She was having bad day, too. That made me feel better, not that she was having a bad day, but that my misery and bad attitude had someone to hang out with. We laughed. I performed minor surgery on my feet, draining a blister, shaving down a callus (I literally used my razor). The landscape was less than stellar. There were lots of climbs, more than you would expect from the elevation graph, no water, no views. Just hot air and pissy attitudes. Occasionally you could just make out a little farm through the limbs of a tree, but even that few was few and far between. The flies were annoying. They would kamikaze you in the face. They reminded me of teenage punks, just out to annoy whomever they could. I did my best to shoo them away, but my salty face was just too enticing. My snickers was melted all over the place.We decided to camp near a stream shown in the guidebook. When we got close, there wasn't much in the way in water. I got worried. I kept going, hoping the situation would improve. I walked farther. I found a little more water, and then a little more. Finally there were some small cascades, enough to fill the water and soak the feet. I turned into the campsite, and there one the ground was the number "600" spelled out in rocks. It was official! I made it! I took a vanity shot, and immediately emailed it to family. My bad day suddenly had become a good day. We set up our tents and washed in the creek. I drank some more of my wine and was surprised how tipsy I felt after a few sips. Woah! The night was still as can be, and the bugs tried like hell to get into the tent. Fortunately, their day ended in frustration, not mine.