Date: 2018-07-13
From: 501 shelter

To: Port Clinton Pavilion 
Miles today: 23.9

Hi y'all,    Well my day didn't go as planned, but all is well that ends well. I'll get to the story in a bit.    The trail magic breakfast was awsome, thank you Nazarene church of Suffolk, Va. they made eggs onsite, bacon, sausage, and numerous other stuff and done resupply. It's probaly one of the only times the hikers hear the message.      Nick, 2 steps and I headed out and hiked till lunchtime with them, then I moved on to a tentsite at Phillips Spring and that's where things started getting a bit hairy for my taste.     Still no love for PA rocks, so brutal on feet. If the whole trail would be like this I would quit. Next 50-60 miles is the worst. I've made plans to carry 3 days worth of food and resupply every 40 miles, so my pack is light to deal with rocks.     Ok, now with the hairy main event. The original plan was to hike about 19 miles to Phillips Spring with tentsite. Well that's what I did and the spring was down a steep ravine and it was really steep, but I was out of water so down I went. I got my water and across from there was a tentsite and decided I'd try that. I must say my first intuition was I shouldn't stay here, I don't know why but I felt it. But I was tired so I set up, about an hr later some deer snorted and passed through. Then later around 10pm I heard this wheeze/sneeze and instant chills started running up and down my spine and the hair on my neck stood up. It sounded like a large overgrown cat sneeze. I yelled and then got my headlamp and got out of tent to scan the woods, sure enough there was a pair of yellow eyes watching me 25-30 yards in the brush. So I scanned some more to see if there were more and then boom my headlamp died, now I'm really scrambling for new batteries and the flashlight on my phone, first I scan the wood line with it and nothing but I noticed the wind had shifted more to the left. Finally got batteries changed and checked the wood line brush and there they were directly down wind of me and now I get really nervous as he is definitely closer than the first time. So I yell and do hand waving and the eyes never left me. Now I have to make a decision. I'm trumping to remember what they said on AT orientation, green eyes are deer, blue are bear cubs, red is mature bears and yellow is more likely a cat of some kind. Geez, ok I now grab my trekking pole and put it within reach and it's now about 40-45 mins since I've heard the sneeze and I realize this thing is not going to leave but I'm gonna leave. It didn't take long to tear down and pack up and when I left those eyes were still there. I turned my back and walked down the trail not very excited to hike 4.5 miles in the dark considering the terrain and yes it's worse at night and one of the steepest downhills so far. I got into town to the AT pavilion in Port Clinton at 1:30 am. The hikers were amazed this morning to see me especially hiking in the dark with the terrain. It takes me an hr or 2 to slow my adrenaline down so I got an hr or 2 of sleep. So I did hike 23 plus miles yest unintentionally. So that's the story and prefer not having to many of those. Cyall!Ps: I mentioned this to Watchman this morning and he knew I was planning on tenting there and he thought about tenting as well but when he came through he said it just didn't feel right, so kept on going. Usually your intuition is right.