Date: 2016-05-07
From: Deer Lick Shelters

To: Trail of Hope Hostel via US 30
Miles today: 13.2
Weather: light rain

At about 9:15 last night as the rain was letting up, three hikers showed up to the shelter and I scooted over to make some room. I was amazed to see that it was Magic! I haven't seen him literally since Hot Springs. He was with Odysseus and Puzzles (whom I met briefly on Big Bald). He had lost the group he was with because they decided to do the four state challenge (44+ miles from the edge of Virginia to the edge of Pennsylvania) and he chose not to. They had apparently just spent all day hottubbing courtesy of some massage therapist who picked them up at PenMar. They pushed on for the night, but I hope to see him again (and in the daylight). Paul and Ray were up decently early this morning and as they left and nodded goodbye I got up and began moving around. It wasn't raining, and it only drizzled on us during the day, but yesterday was so crazily wet that we just wanted to let ourselves dry out somewhere, so the plan was just to head thirteen miles to Fayetteville, where we could do laundry and hang out for the night at a church hostel. We all hiked as a clump together almost the whole day, trying to stick together so we could get picked up for Fayetteville together. The big news is that Sooner or Later's new red headband has turned his hair pink. It's very fashion-forward. The shelters farther along the trail were quite nice. There was one decent uphill and a few sections of really tough rock hopping. I spose that's what I'll have to get used to in the next weeks: steep climbs followed by miles of rocky tough ridge line. We passed a huge group of Boy Scouts as we made our way down to US 30, where, after about the tenth time of her not being able to hear me on my end of the phone line, we were picked up by a woman who works at the Trail of Hope hostel and ministry. We drove in the back of a flatbed to the hostel down the road. The sun - which we are all now calling Bob, short for the Big Orange Ball (apparently an Army thing) - finally came out. We brought our things into the hostel and were showed around. It's a nice converted house, and the price is right, actually. Next door is their church that according to Google Maps used to be a Mexican restaurant. It looks the part. There is a sign on the door that tells you that you will be asked to leave the premises if you take the Lord's name in vain. We all took showers and convinced the hostel workers to drive us into town to the laundromat and Dollar General. I also followed Blues' example and did a pre wash of my socks. Goodness. I will never just put my socks in the washer straight again. I washed my socks in a bucket with about two liters of soapy water, then two rounds of just clean water. Each time, the result was water black like coffee. It is just incredible the amount of grime that has accumulated on those things. Yich. Blues, Bolt, Sooner and I got driven in the same pickup down to the laundromat where we put our clothes into wash and went next door to an Italian restaurant where a sassy waitress (who happened to know Ansonia, CT, right next to where I'm from) served us delicious delicious food. The top of the list was loaded fries, which had cheese, bacon, and green onion. I had a chicken Parm sub and onion rings. We went back and dried our clothes and ended up waiting around for them then just deciding to walk to Family Dollar while our clothes finished drying. The walk was pretty far, and when it turned out at the end of our disappointing resupply that the driver could just bring us to Walmart five miles down the road, we were all a little pissed. We walked back to the laundromat and collected our clothes, met the fattest chihuahua we'd ever seen that belonged to a woman with green hair then got picked up to go to Walmart. I tried to move quickly through my resupply and that combined with the fact that I didn't know how much food I had left meant I ended up with WAY too much food for the next section. It's depressing to have to leave food behind, but I will almost certainly be doing just that when the morning comes. I have about 4 days' worth of food and Awol's itineraries suggest I needed only 2 from Harper's Ferry to get to Duncannon (because of food you can get along the way). Eh. We went across the parking lot next door where there was a potluck dinner waiting for us. I'm not sure what they usually do for dinner, but there was a gospel music concert tonight and about 20 people were eating dinner together. It was chicken tetrazzini, salad, and a lot of dessert options including something called "fat lady salad" which is essentially pistachio pudding. We chatted amongst ourselves and talked about how we four were taking this somewhat foreign experience in stride. We also met Gary, a flip flopped from Utah with whom I chatted for a while while the others went back to the house. As Nobos from Springer, our relationship with flip floppers is strange. And usually strained. It'll probably become easier as time goes on, but right now the two groups couldn't be more different. Backpacking is old hat to us. There are always new challenges to be met, but we are working with a two month of basis of dealing with backpacker problems. The flip floppers have about 60 miles under their belt. They are probably hitting their first resupply, and things are starting to shake out: gear is proving itself to be good or useless; bodies are starting to hurt. Every flip flopper we've met clearly wants to be counted an AT hiker. Like this other guy at the hostel whom we met. He started at Harper's but has been holed up here for a day or two waiting on some antibiotics for a kidney infection he developed. He describes it as: "oh yeah, had to take a break from the trail for a few days," but to us, he hasn't even started yet! His hike is on a pause right at the beginning. I'm not going to say there's animosity between the groups, but with other Nobos from Springer, there is such a wealth of shared experience - you might know so and so, did you stay at such and such - that is completely gone when talking to flip floppers. They want to be considered real hikers after a week, and must feel shut down by the fact that we can't see them as such. Conversely, we have a nagging resentment when they try to bring up hardships they've faced and find common ground with us. It can only get better, I'm sure, but right now, it's not that we're not on good terms, it's that we're not speaking the same language. I facetimed Ali for quite a while. I miss her deeply, but being able to talk to her like this makes everything a lot better. I'm really excited to see her again when I head home in a couple weeks. It's funny thinking that I literally had not going a single day without hiking since I got back on Atkins. Seems like decades ago. In the space of a few days, we've got from Virginia, a state I've visited once, that seems impossibly far away from home, so obviously Southern, to Pennsylvania, where I've visited numerous times, and seems so close to home. Tomorrow we'll get out and head back to the trailhead and do our first long day of hiking in PA. Not sure where we'll finish, but we will be passing the 2016 halfway point!!! Hoorayyyy!