Date: 2003-05-05
From: Wilson creek shelter

To: bryant ridge shelter
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: light rain

today was probably one of the most interesting days. or rather, we were just in a very interesting situation. woke up fairly early and got off quickly. to start the day off we run into some trail majic. and who is it from? none other than mr. cranky pants himself! i thought i liked the guy before, now...well now, hes just my hero! and he knew exactly what to leave us - mountain dew and a bunch of litle debbie snacks! and we couldnt have asked for better time placement. it had just started raining and the wind was pickin up and it was just cold and miserable. so nice to have a surprise to come to. cranky pants...you are so the man! one day, im gonna get you back. anyways... we got to the blue ridge parkway shortly after that and cires mom was at one of the parking lots that we went by. and of course it was raining, cold, and incredibly foggy! so, it was nice to see her. she even brought coffee! and not even that, mochas and lattes! so nice. so we were sittin there and just decided that we could take advantage of her having a car and take us up the trail a few miles. so yes, we have now officially yellow-blazed (skipped miles on the a.t.). it was a tough decision cause weve never done it and it was just weird. but then we remembered that its not about the miles, and if we want to take advantage of a good situation to get us out of a bad one, then we will. the bad one being...one, the weather stinks and is probably gonna hold us up a little bit. second, we kinda have to be in buena vista on thursday, early, so we would be pushing and pushing to get there which is the one thing weve decided that we didnt want to do anymore. so, we jumped up to a road that was a little closer to this shelter and thus cutting some of the miles out going to buena vista. we dont have to push as hard. anyways...the one thing about this was that the car was packed with bags and food and all that so she could only take 2 at most at a time. so she took ketchup first since she wasnt feeling good, and it took her about an hour and a half to get back to take two more. so, ended up taking til about 3 for us all to get to the road we were shootin for. and we passed a burger king on the way so cire went back after dropping us off and getting a bag of cheeseburgers and some fries so we could bring em to the girls at the shelter. it was better than we imagined! oh, and we ended up getting the last one of us (oopu) aride from a lady that was driving by on the blue ridge pkwy. she stopped to ask us if we new what the road was like for the next few miles and in the process we asked if she could help us out. she was so amazing! she took some of the gear and oopu! and she had a really nice audi car that looked brand new, so we tried not to dirty it but she didnt mind! anyways...it just turned out so nice! definitely the unexpected blessing of today! so, after all that we finally made it to the shelter. we actually hiked a little over 7 miles, but actually covered 20.6! kinda cool. the good of it all is that we got to rest a little more and just chill and enjoy ourselves at the shelter here. its a really nice, big, two story shelter so its nice! and as soon as we got here, it started pouring down rain. so nice to finally be on the good side of the storm! out of it! so, im just gonna play some guitar, maybe play some cards with 5 alive, and read some. just relax for once! nice, nice...