Date: 2012-05-19
From: Davis Hollow 

To: O'Lystery Pavilion 
Miles today: 10.3
Weather: clear sky

I woke up early but ignored my alarm and fell back asleep until 8:00am.  We got to the business of hiking the first baby hill at 10:00am.  There are quite a few things to work out on your second day, especially after a monster town meal.  We met Taylor, Tim, and Dave hiking a section up to Pearisburg from Atkins.  They have been doing this for nine years and were hiking with a larger group that was somewhere behind them. We dropped into a gap and ate lunch on a flat area beneath tall oaks near a little shady stream about five miles from our previous campsite.  I am normally a quick eater of lunch and used to just snacking while I walk, however, the addition of sandwiches to my diet has changed that slightly.  P-Mo and Anna were having a pretty tough day and were difficult to motivate.  They also cooked lunch again.  I remember my second day and understood what they were going through.  Pain.  Lots of pain.  And even more to come.  We ate with the growing group as they arrived and discovered that Downhill and Patches were among them.  They hiked to Trail Days and then skipped up to Atkins to hike with their family.  Also, in bigger news, Downhill and Patches became engaged.  Patches asked Downhill to marry him at the base of Laurel Falls.  Good man.  Two hours later and we left to start hiking up the monster hill of the day:  800' over the course of a mile and a half.  Not crazy but a big deal on your second day.  It was shady under the forest canopy and we took a few breaks.  We got to the top, didn't have a view (becoming my expectation) and walked down to a thin corridor of trees.  The strip of trees was maybe twenty feet wide and had pasture on both sides.  We followed this down to a road and came across two farmers mowing weeds on their property.  It was hot out in the open fields and we started climbing the next hill immediately.  We crossed quite a few fence stiles and getting Baxter through them can be difficult.  If there isn't barbed wire, he can sometimes squeeze under the wooden rungs of the ladder but we usually need to take his pack off and bribery with popcorn is often required too.  He really wants to go up and over like humans do.  Although he has no problem going up, the coming down part is often lacking grace.  And it's dangerous.  Using the handle on Baxter's harness to guide him down is also an option but the body dynamics prove a little awkward.  After walking through some rolling pasture we came across the South Fork of the Holston River and splashed about for a bit.  The cold water felt great on our beat up feet. The banks were covered in wildflowers and we hung out on the outside bend of this slow, wide river for a half hour in the shade watching the sun glitter through the trees on it's way toward the horizon.  We headed out relaxed and crossed the river at the bridge.  Camp was another mile down the road.  We got halfway there and saw that the last water source was a tiny trickle through some thick cow-muck.  I walked back to the river to filter and let the girls move on so they could set up camp in the remaining daylight.  I took a shortcut down a steep, leaf-covered hill and ducked under some barbed wire to make my walk a bit shorter.  On my way back, I discovered that Anna had left her trekking poles sort of hidden behind my pack.  I assumed she had forgotten them and picked them up to take to the proposed campsite.  I crossed the mud pit of a stream with four poles and headed up the bushy pasture following the blazes north.  Around a bend, I discovered Anna's pack (an eleven-year-old Go-Lite) hidden in the Rhododendron.  I called out several times.  I waited.  I called out some more.  No responses came back.  I assumed she was looking for her poles and that she walked south down the path right past them.  I left the poles next to her pack and continued north toward camp.  About a mile later, I run into P-Mo walking south without a pack.  The plot thickens.  I ask if she knew where Anna was and she acted as if I was playing a prank on her. It took two more repeats and some extra explanation before I got a straight answer.  Of course, it wasn't a big deal and Anna had just walked back to the bridge to filter water.  We missed each other when I walked down the steep hillside.  P-Mo was walking south to grab a photo of the gorgeous hillside at sunset.  These are the sorts of things that happen when your group size exceeds one.  I told P-Mo that I would meet them at camp.  I left my pack in a flat spot for P-Mo's tent that was away from the other tents.  I also sized up a grove of trees across the stream and up a little hill for the hammocks.  There was Stinging Nettle everywhere but it was a long day and I happily put my orange Croc's on and walked down the path with my uke to wait for the girls by the road.  I figured out a new finger-picking technique by the time the girls got back.  Camp setup went fairly smooth despite the darkness and the nettle and it was cloudy so we set up rainflys over the hammocks.  I taught P-Mo a new friction knot: the Appalachian Flyer.  It's really designated by some forgettable five-digit number and a dash B but I have renamed it for my own usage.  I searched through all of my knot books and a few more at the library while in Tahoe this winter.  The perfect friction knot for non-load-bearing applications was my reward to share.  I will tie this baby for decades.  Hopefully.  We ate dinner and hung our food bags.  There was signage everywhere about the bear problem in this particular area and we all nodded off with that somewhere in the back of our minds.