Date: 2019-05-31
From: Brushy Mountain Outpost

To: Stuarts Draft
Miles today: 0.0

May 31 (Day 71): It poured rain last night, but we were warm and dry in our tent. About 6am we heard someone "knock" on our tent. We were already awake so I said "Yes?" and a familiar voice said "Mom? Dad?" David and I looked at each other and quietly yelled "Mackenzie? Megan?" We didn't want to wake up the other hikers camped near us, so we quickly unzipped the tent and said "Oh my gosh!! Come in here so we don't wake anyone up! " When we unzipped the door, the best word to describe their reaction is "recoiled". Because that is exactly what they did while pinching their noses and covering their mouths. They both gagged and said "Oh my God, you smell!" and they backed away from our tent. The hiker next to us was taking his tent down and said to them "Yeah, we do stink after a while." I kept trying to shush the girls and have them come in the tent, but there was no way they were getting anywhere near it! So we shoved our feet in our boots and jumped out to hug them! We hadn't expected them for hours. There are no adequate words to describe how good it was to see them. Two months! We had never been away from them for that long.We hustled around to the front of the building to talk. They said after we had texted them our location last night, they said "Let's be spontaneous and surprise them!" So they jumped in the car at 9:30 that night and drove to Bland. (I told them I had heard a car pull into the gravel parking lot late the night before, but thought it was just turning around.) It was midnight. Mackenzie put on her headlamp and she and Megan came around the building, hoping to surprise us. They saw an orange tent like ours and Megan began unzipping the door. She only had the zipper a little way up when she saw boots and said "That's not their boots!" and quickly rezipped the tent and they ran back to the car. They decided they would wait until closer to morning where there would be more light.It rained that night and they said they were glad to be in a dry car. ?Then about 6 they came looking for us again. That's when they came around to the back of the building and saw all the tents. We have an orange 3-man Big Agnes tent so it was easier to pick out in the light. (The one they started to unzip the night before was also an orange Big Agnes, but only a 2-man.)We talked and packed up our gear and by then the restaurant was open. We all had breakfast. David and I apologized to Chong for "someone" unzipping his tent in the middle of the night, but he just laughed when he heard the story. He said he had taken a sleeping pill and was dead to the world. He had put in 25 miles that day.After breakfast we loaded our stuff into the trunk. (I saw there were sheets and towels covering the seats in the car.) We gave a hiker a ride into Bland and then headed home to Stuarts Draft.We will be off trail for a few weeks until we take care of some stuff at home. We plan to be back on the AT no later than July 1st. We will probably flip up north to Killington, VT to get to Katahdin, Maine by August 15th. We then have to run back home to take Megan to college and help Mackenzie move into her first apartment. Then back on the trail until the end of September. I will return to work on October 7th, thank goodness, because we will be coming home to an empty house and that is going to be very hard. I am really going to need something to keep my mind busy.Until then....