Date: 2008-11-22
From: Somewhere on the AT?

To: Boone, NC
Miles today: 9.0

Tonight all six of us are relaxing comfortably at our friend Doc's house in Boone, NC. We're about an hour from the trail and plan on returning tomorrow morning and getting 15 miles in.A quick recap of the past week:-We left Damascus and the kind hospitality of Defaults parents. I climbed up the hill, realized I forgot my map in Docs truck, went back down the hill and got it back, the hiked 10 miles to the shelter alone...in the dark...and rain...which quickly turned to sleet...then snow. Wonderful. The next morning we woke up to an inch or two on the ground. Beautiful...until our trail runners (glorified tennis shoes) got soaked through and then froze solid. It was a cold day. We got in some good miles though and made it to a very windy shelter. The girls rigged up their tent to keep the wind out, and I was warm and grateful. -I used to think cold wet shoes where bad, but it's much worse to wake up and having your shoes frozen solid. It took much effort to get them on, and they were still hard as rocks and very painful. We took to setting on each others feet to defrost the shoes. Hiking is fun! (just keep repeating this until you believe it)-After a couple of days of this we came to the famous Kincora hostel run by Bob Peoples. Wonderful place and a wonderful man. We set up a slack pack the next day and ran 24 miles back to Kincora. The next day (Wednesday) we agreed to do some trail maintenance with Bob, back at Damascus on the hill I climbed so many times. We ended up adding 240 feet of trail and having a great time. Kind of a zero day but not really. We also ran into Bookworm on the road there, and Mousetrap and T-bone while working on the trail. Went back to Kincora only to find the pipes froze over (it was 9 degrees at 8am!), so no laundry or running water for us. -Thursday saw us climbing Roane Mountain, just a few feet shorter than Mt Washington. It was freezing and very windy. We planned on going over the mountain and staying at a shelter 22 miles in. The snow was so deep though it slowed us down and wore us out, we would end up staying at the Roane Mt shelter at 6000 feet with a high school group and a bunch of hungry mice. -We woke up to frozen shoes the next morning, it was hard to get going. We where so cold we decided to stop early at Greasy creek hostel, but we wouldn't make it that far. It snowed again, and some of the drifts where up to my hips. Our shoes were not up to the task, some of us had ice forming between our toes. We made it to a road and tried to hitch to the hostel, conditions where too bad to hike the trail. We walked a few miles down the road, freezing, and no one would stop to help us out. An SUV stopped to see if they could help, but it was full and they didn't have room to give us a ride. They went down the road about a 100 feet, stopped, turned around and came back. I was about to be introduced to southern hospitality...-The Ingram's told us to hike back up the road and they would pick us up and take us someplace warm. They came back with two trucks and took us to their lovely amazing home. First they sat us in front of their thermo-nuclear wood stove and let us warm up, then they gave us dry socks while they washed and dried all our wet clothes. Then they took us upstairs and fed us a homemade meal of soup, grilled cheese sandwich, and milk. Now, when I say homemade, I don't mean they made the soup from scratch. I mean they raised the beef that was now in the soup and the milk was fresh from the cow that morning, unpasteurized and absolutely delicious! We where in love.   We sat around and talked for a few hours and didn't really want to leave, which was made easier when they invited us to stay the night. They fed us a delicious dinner (hand churned butter!!!) and we watched "Stardust" on their big screen TV. In the morning we had fresh from scratch biscuits and gravy, home made apple butter, and so many other things I lost track. This was such a wonderful experience I still having trouble comprehending it. We where just some cold, wet, stinky people walking down the trail, and the Ingrams welcomed us into their home as if we where family. Amazing. We also talked about Jersey cows, I want one.-We had trouble leaving, but finally got on the trail this morning and hiked 9 miles. We got to some road where Doc and her roomate Nina where waiting for us. The Ingrams actually stopped by to make sure we made it OK (I almost cried they where so nice!). On the way back to Doc's house we stopped at Bob's dairy land, the place Godzilla told us so many times in Maine that they had the best cheeseburgers in the world. It was kind of awesome, I even got a pinto bean dinner (much to the dismay of everyone else that has to share space with me!) We made it into Boone, got some Gortex shoes and Gaiters to keep out the snow, then went back to Docs house. I had a wonderful shower, ate some lovely asian food, and thanked God for putting such amazing people in our lives. the best part was I got to talk to BooBoo for a good while; I miss her much. Life is indeed wonderful.