Date: 2016-08-16
From: Baldplate Lean-to

To: Hall Mt. Shelter
Miles today: 14.0
Weather: overcast clouds

The day started off like the last week and a half with giant boulder-based mountains, falling on my stomach and crawling on my hands and knees. It was scary. On the way down was another knee jarring adventure. Once getting to the bottom it happened! After a week and a half it finally happened!! The Appalachian hiking trail turned back into the Appalachian hiking trail. No more repelling down cliffs, no more grabbing onto trees or roots or anything you could find. No more scary downhills with a thousand oversized slippery steps. The next six miles were actually therapeutic as I was able to stretch my legs and return to my blistering pace of 2mph (ha, ha). As I got to the only road crossing of the day with no one around I stopped and opened my pack to take a rare look at my book and what was ahead of me this afternoon. Just then a young woman in a pick up out of nowhere stopped and asked me if I needed a ride into town. I told her I wasn't really planning on it but she was right here so that might not be a bad idea. I then asked her how hard it would be for me to get back to the trail as this road says "tough hitch logging road" in our hiking book. It was at this moment everything changed   Sarah stated she would bring me to the Country Store, run a quick errand and bring me right back to the trail. OMG perfect! I immediately went into town mode when I got to the store. Looked at the menu for 2 seconds and ordered a large chicken parm sub and a large hamburger sub. With the next breath I asked the woman behind the grill where I could plug in my phone. As I was hooking my phone up I glanced to my right to see the large selection of cold beers. Nope. Not today. This was going to be a high calorie, high quality stop. While waiting for my lunch to cook I made the mistake of going back into the store. I picked up a large blueberry muffin, half a pound of ham, a large coffee, 2 strawberry milks and a powerade with a large bag of chips. Sarah returned in 20 minutes as promised with her two beautiful daughters aged two and three.Their blonde hair and crystal blue eyes made them so charming. I was back at the trailhead in one hour flat and my head was spinning. My phone went from 25% to 85%. My stomach went from 10% to 100% full. And as soon as I waved goodbye and started walking on the trail my eyes mediately welled up. This was probably the single most important act of trail magic I've received on this journey so far. I needed it really bad and the timing was impeccable. I will never forget it, thank you Sarah.   It's now 5 o'clock and it's starting to rain. As I pulled off the trail I remembered I'm down to my last dollar store poncho. With no backpack cover, thanks to the hurricane winds the other day. I came around the corner and to my surprise there was a shelter. Had no idea I was that close to one. There was no one there and I made up my mind I'm not going anywhere the rest of the night. I spread my stuff out like I owned the place and even got a good fire going for a while with bundles of dry wood and kindling that someone had left in the shelter. Fell asleep at 7:30 to the sound of pouring rain hitting the tin roof top all night. I consider this a game-changing day for my last few weeks on the trail. 14 miles the hard way today!