Date: 2007-05-05
From: Sam's Gap

To: Spivey Gap, NC
Miles today: 13.3
Weather: light rain

Last nite, Persistent and I decided to force ourselves to eat our trail food fordinner. We took our stoves outside and started cooking under the covered driveof the motel. Ms. Janet, and Hangman drove up to drop some people off, and Ms.Janet was shocked to see us firing up our stoves! LOL She asked us what wasfor dinner, and we told her Lipton's (ick). She goes, "Hey, another hiker gaveme this for the hiker box, and this would probably be better than Lipton's". Itwas some caribbean rice homemade meal, so Persistent and I enthusiasticallyaccepted, and made that for dinner instead! LOL THANKS MS. JANET!! We were up and ready to catch our slackpack shuttle that was to pick us up @10:00 a.m. I called the P.O. to see if my shoes had shown up, they had, but themailperson had already left so they couldn't deliver it to the motel.There were 4 of us leavig from the motel, and when Pete called to check on theshuttle, Ms. Janet said it would be closer to 11:00 a.m. Well, I decided totake advantage of the time and left to go get my new shoes, which I reallywanted to break in today. Since it was Saturday,the P.O was only open a fewhours.I get half way there (I'm walkng) and of course 2 trains go by, which meant Ihad to stand there and wait. All of a sudden, Persistent is there telling methe shuttle is right there (behind me on the road) and they would take me by theP.O. SCORE!!Tim, who is helping out Ms. Janet, swung me by, I got my shoes, and we were allof to Sam's Gap.It was Persistent, Pete, me, and a guy named Leatherneck. Leatherneck and I hadboth been born in the same hospital had both served in the USMC and had bothbeen stationed @ the same base in Hawaii! Granted, he retired from it and I didnot, but it was still weird how much we had in common.We started hiking @ 11:30 a.m. It was raining, cloudy, foggy, and in the 50's. Pretty icky weather, and the trail was a muddy wet mess. Perfect conditions forbreaking in my shoes! LOLEverything was green green green today. Quite pretty actually. There have beensevere storms for the past 2 days, and it was as if the entire forest wasresting and recovering from the pounding. It was eerily quiet all day, only thesounds of rain drops falling and pelting the leaves. It was foggy, so the stillness was amplified even more by the natural sounddampner. At one point I just stood there and I could feel the lack of sound. Hard to explain, but beautiful in its own right.We climbed over Big Bald today, but no views. It was totally socked in andraining pretty hard. From time to time, we could see clouds below us, and theywere moving by swiftly.I only saw a few snails, leeches, and caterpillars on the trail today. A fewbirds were chirping, but there was very little visible animal action today.My foot was not 100% but was far better than a few days ago. I was beingmindful of how I placed it and tried to keep it aligned with my body. EverytimeI stopped for even a minute, I stretched before I started off again. I alsonoticed a huge difference in support from my 300+ mile shoes and my new shoes. I'm crossing my toes and fingers I can keep this under control and managed.We got trail magic today too! There was a cooler with hard boiled eggs,cookies, and a thermos of coffee with cups! It was perfec timing, because wedecided we really didn't want to stop for lunch because it was so cold andnasty, so this allowed us to have something a bit more substantial than candybars.We got to Spivey Gap @ 6:00 p.m. We were hoping the shuttle that picked up theother guys would still be there, but it wasn't, so we stood there in thepouring rain till 6:30, when Tim said he'd come back.There were some beautiful places to camp in this stretch. I'm itching to getback out there, but it's so hard to know what is right when it comes to givinga potential injury a break. After we got back to the motel, Tim told us there was a dinner shuttle to anearby town. Persistent has been craving Red Lobster the entire hike, so weasked if there was one, and Tim said yes! Guess what Persistent got tonight?! Her dream came true, crab legs and cheddar biscuits! mmmm I got the friedseafood platter and man did we do some major damage! LOLNow it's time for some zzzzz's. I'm exhausted and we're slacking again tomorrowfrom Spivey into Erwin so we can get caught up. I think w're going to walk overto Ms. Janet's for breakfast. We heard it is fantastic!Tonight I'm feeling a bit down. I think it's because I feel like I can't geteverything working right @ the same time. Also, I talked to Rachael and someonebroke into her vehicle and stole a bunch of stuff. Home matters don't go awayout here, they just get harder to deal with due to distance. I just want tohike.~Certain