Date: 2010-04-21
From: Overmountain Shelter

To: US 19/ Roan mountain, tn
Miles today: 9.2
Weather: light rain

Day 45Do you know what plans and the Appalachian Trail have in common? .... Absolutely nothing. I am not even sure they are allowed to co-exist on the same plain of reality. I am in the home of another friend from the backpacking forum WWW.thebackpacker.com/trailtalk who goes by the name Moonshine. He's been following my journal and lives near this part of my hike. He came up the AT to meet me this morning and gave me one heck of a nice surprise. He had a truck parked at the road crossing and wanted to drive me anywhere I wanted to go. What a great thing to do. There are some really good people on TrailTalk. Savannah and Brianna, you guys should remember him from our camping trip to Grayson Highlands in the snow a year ago. He was the guy sleeping in that hammock that looked like a tent.So this morning started out raining and foggy and then added cold shortly afterwards. I hung around in my bag for awhile before packing up and moving out shortly after 9am. If it had been like this yesterday I would not have zeroed. Not sure if I think that's a good thing or a bad thing. I just know that I really truly enjoyed yesterday and I paid for it with the several miles of balds and no visibility. I mean I couldn't even see myself. OK, that's an exaggeration. I could see myself, but it was still pretty darn foggy.And windy. I was having a hard enough time climbing up the steep and long slope of the bald, but the wind added the additional fun of being blown sidewsys off the trail. I could feel in my bones how awesome the views must have been the day before. But that's OK to because a grassy bald in the thick of a cloud bank has its own special beauty too. Rock outcroppbgs and scrub trees slowly materialized as you approached them. The horizon, being only 100 feet away, was like a moving window on mythical land. At one point something began to form from the mist into a dark shape, that slowly turned human as the southbound hiker came into view. That was wicked cool. After numerous false summits I was finally over the final crest with about 4 1/2 miles to go to the road and food in one of the towns. I kicked it into downhill gear and started chugging swiftly down the trail. 2 miles later a guy coming up the trail calls me Hyway. This is weird because I don't know any southbounders (mostly because you just can't trust those southbounders) But I already told you the surprise, it was moonshine, come to help me on my hike. Too cool. I felt bad because he was there the day before when I said I was hiking down that day but I zeroed instead. Turns out Moonshine just loves hiking and was happy to just be in the woods. I also got to score some lucky points when 4 other thrus got to share in some trail magic shuttle service provided by Moonshine.During the next hour we decided that I would slackpack from where I got off today to Kinkiest 23 miles away. The terrain looks flatter than anything we've seen yet so I am going to give it a try. Moonshine is going way out of his way to help me out. I'll be sleeping at his house for two nights and he'll make at least 4 trips to the trsilheads. As with Naked Ape, I do not know how to pay back this kind of generosity. Oh, and Moonshine lives about as close as you can live Linville Falls without wearing a Park Service uniform. We took a walk over to it this evening and its less than a 1/2 mile away. That's to the overlook, a good golfer could probably hit a Tee shot from the bsckyard into the river. He has a great place here. Well I better get to sleep. They start their day very early and I have a lot of walking to do. I just want to add that I love that the Jolly Rancher lore has been sighted in Disney World as stated in the journal. That was funny because just that day I went over my biggest Jolly Rancher hill ever. Goodnight and sweetdresms to all of you out there not living the Randomness Rules Dream.