Date: 2012-11-18
To: October Shakedown Hike-Summary
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: few clouds

Well, my ability to recreate my October hike day by day, did not come to fruition...shedding light on the fact that I need to find a means of keeping my journal while on the trail next year. In 2003 I used the amazing-for-its-time Pocketmail, a device that I typed into daily and when arriving at a phone in towns would dial an 800 number, hold the device up to the phone, and send and receive emails. My transcriber Farmer Bob from Maine would then cut and paste my journal entries to my Trail Journals account. It was fairly easy and worked well for my hike. But with the advent of smart phones, the Pocketmail went the way of the dinosaurs and took its last breath in 2010. I really missed having the device on this hike. I did carry my cell phone, but those itty bitty keys and small screen are impossible for me to write an entire day's journal on and I rarely had a signal anyway. I have a Kindle Fire that will most likely take the trip with me and I'm sure will work well, I just need to justify the weight....and drop weight somewhere else.Back to the point of this entry: Even with my notes, scrawed across Awol's AT Guide pages, I'm still not able to recreate the day to day hike, so will do several hike summaries and another entry for my gear summary.First and foremost, I have even more respect for section hikers than I ever did. The logistics of planning a 10 day hike are overwhelming, just the aspect of moving our two cars was energy draining and frustrating. I got to the point where I would have paid anything just to have somebody take us where we needed to go. Our attempt to move a car from Bears Den to the Blackburn AT Center was enough to make me run screaming from the mountain! Mapquest directions put us on the wrong side of the mountain and it took us several hours just to get turned back around and headed in the right direction. So much time spent driving that could have been spent hiking. But that's what section hikers deal with every time they go out, and the farther they live from the selected hike, the more costly and time consuming it is to get there. Through it all, Knee Hi stayed calm and happy. "This is what I do everytime I hike" she said. And still she goes on, hiking every chance she can, chewing off bits and pieces of her 20-year-plan hike of the Appalachian Trail. Kudos to YOU Knee Hi and all of the other sectioners whether on the 20 year plan, the 10 year plan or the 5 year plan!During the 6 days we spent on the trail we had 3 creepy guy incidents. Three! I didn't have 3 creepy guy incidents on my entire 2003 hike. The first creepy guy was at the trail head to Dick's Dome Shelter. We had stopped at the trailhead to sit on the boulders and cook our lunch as we had eaten a cold meal the night before. We were just cleaning up and I noticed a blue shirt through the trees that was coming our way and I motioned to Knee Hi that a hiker was coming up. But he didn't come. He walked 30 feet toward where we were and turned around and looked back from where he'd come. Then he walked back for a bit, then turned around and walked toward us again. We thought he was waiting for someone, but that someone never came. You could tell he was struggling with what to do and finally just decided to continue past us. As he passed, Knee Hi called out, "Hey, how's it going?" He nodded his head and mumbled something and moved on, never slowing his pace or stopping as most hikers do. He was dressed in a royal blue shirt and shorts with white tube socks and sneakers. On his back was a daypack and attached to his belt was a 10 in long knife. But it was his eyes that scared the living daylights out of me. The were huge and darted back and forth, back and forth as he passed us. He was obviously afraid of US, and it had taken a tremendous effort for him to actually walk past us on the trail. We were both creeped out by the incident and I said to Knee Hi, "Why on earth did you try to engage him!?" She explained to me that she had learned at work to engage someone that seems suspicious. It lets them know that they've been seen, that you know what they look like and could identify them if needed. Hmmm, never thought of it that way, but it sounded like a good idea to me and I'll remember that. Didn't think I'd have to use it again so soon though So at this point we're both really creeped out and just wanted to get moving, so I told Knee Hi to go first and I'd bring up the rear, but I wanted her to keep turning around as if to talk to me so we would know if he came back up on us. We ended up stealthing in Sky Meadows State Campground that night to get off the trail. The night was uneventful and we slept well.Creepy Guy #2 (not nearly creepy as #1 and #3) jogged up to us at the campsites about 600 feet before Rod Hollow Shelter. Miles from any road, with no pack or anything, #2 stopped, asked us how much farther to the shelter, and remembering Knee Hi's lesson from earlier in the day, I walked up to him and told him the shelter was just a short way up the blue blazed trail. Off he jogged...and we never saw him again. Our camp was set for the night, we were eating dinner when he jogged by and it was almost dark. After about 20 minutes, we picked up our hiking poles and went exploring at the shelter. As far as we knew there was only one way in and out and it was past us, so we just wanted to know what was up with our jogger. We go to the shelter and it was empty. He was gone. The only way out would have been an overgrown game trail that ran in front of the privy. OR, he could have been hiding in the woods, watching our campsite and waiting to pounce. As you can see, by now we were really creeped out and went back to our campsite, packed everyting up and hiked on into the darkening woods. After about a mile or so, we took a right turn into the forest, walked up a hill and made camp under some beech trees. After hanging our food bags in a nearby tree, we settled in for the night. It was another uneventful night and we slept well.Creepy Guy #3, the creepiest of all, presented himself at the bottom of a hill at the water source before Ashby Gap. As we decended the hill to the cross the water, I noticed a man in a white Izod type shirt and jeans standing at the bottom of the hill, holding a large unfolded map up and reading it. I turned around to Knee Hi and motioned to her that something didn't seem right. We didn't need water, thank goodness, and even if we had, probably would not have stopped to get it! As we passed, I said, "How's it going?" and he replied in a high, very quick voice, "Yup, yup, yup, good, good". At his feet was an orange bag, and a pair of hiking boots. He had sneakers on his feet. He never dropped the map, never looked at us, but there was something about him that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. We moved on quickly, checking behind us constantly for the next few miles. Needless to say, we survived our creepy guy incidents, but I'm so happy Knee Hi wasn't alone, so happy I wasn't alone, and happy to be doing a thru-hike next year and not a section hike!