Date: 2015-05-30
From: Falls Creek - Mile 1064.9

To: Old Forge Picnic Area
Miles today: 6.6
Weather: broken clouds

I woke up at 8 am which is like mid day for anyone who knows me well. My feet felt like concrete blocks initially. Crafty had been awake for awhile waiting for me to get up. It's been a very very longtime since I have slept for so long! We needed to resupply and decided to try to get a ride to WalMart at the next road rather than backtrack.I discovered that in my fatigue yesterday, I had read but not really comprehended a warning sign posted at the Creek that during a several month period ending Oct 2014, 58,000 gallons of waste water had been dumped into the water that feeds the creek and to not come into contact with the water. Yikes! I had drank (after filtering), cooked and rinsed off with the water the night before. So now I was worried I had been contaminated with poop water! We hiked up to Buena Vista Road thinking about the food we would purchase and consume but once we got to the road, we did not feel optimistic about traffic passing by to hitch a ride. So we decided to hike 18 miles to Fayetteville and resupply there which was our next option. WalMart dreams deflated, we moved slowly for another mile but then Crafty google mapped How far WalMart was from PA16 and we were happy to learn it wasn't far. Rejuvenated once again we hiked the remaining half mile happy to hear lots of traffic sounds. We found a plastic bag of Trail Magic with one remaining Snickers bar left in it. Crafty still had Snickers and didn't want it so I ate it while we tried to hitch a ride. Cars zoomed by but after less than 10 minutes, a red pick up truck made a U-turn. Sonny and Patty had seen us and thought we were trying to cross the street but turned around. We were thrilled and got into the truck. They hiked a lot and would love to hike the AT one day. They dropped us off at WalMart and we put our packs in carts and headed in. After checking out, we parked in the video game room where we could charge our phones and eat. As ghetto as it gets, I was in heaven happily eating my potato wedges from the deli and Cashew Milk Salted Caramel Ice Cream in a Walmart in my Crocs. For dessert I had a banana and a grapefruit since I didn't wNt to carry them or pack out the peels.After we repacked our food bags, we decided we better get back on the trail. It was almost 2 pm and we had spent over 3 hours there! We pushed our carts toward the exit when I made eye contact with a man sitting on the bench and he asked me if I needed a ride back to the trail. Ecstatic that we didn't have to approach anyone for a ride in he parking lot, we followed him and his family out to their car. Apparently Walt, Clair and their 3 daughters offered rides to hikers on occasion. She even said we didn't smell like other hikers they had picked up in the past. Phew! Back on the trail just after 2 pm we started hiking again, still slowly now full and it was hot. We made it to Deer Lick Shelter where we decided to hike just 7 or 8 miles since after that, there wasn't any water or designated camp sites for another 7 miles and we knew we didn't want to hike 14 or 15 miles. We headed off again for the next shelter when Ferris passed by slack packing. We reached the second shelter just as it started to drizzle. We knew the Old Forge picnic area was just 0.1 miles away so we walked there and sought shelter under a pavilion. It stopped raining by 7 pm. I had mentioned I heard people camp under pavilions so we could always spend the night.   We had been passed by Ferris earlier slack packing. Five and Wild Thing walked up to our Pavillion slackpacking since Wild Thing's dad was nearby. They also assured us Wild Things dad thought the poop water I drank was okay since it was last year. Apparently he is a water expert. Phew! The sun came out but the ground was wet so we decided to cook dinner and camp. We moved to another Pavillion and moved two very heavy tables together. I didn't want to sleep in concrete and thought sleeping on the benches of two tables together would be big enough and also hide us from traffic. Crafty was thinking of sleeping under the table but decided the bench was better too. The fireflies were very cool too.