morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2003-04-17
From: Cosbin Box Shelter

To: Mountain Mommas
Miles today: 8.0

Cosby Knob Shelter to Mountain Mommas. Not 11 miles just 8 miles. I got in about 10:30 in the morning. I had a huge cheeseburger. Eddy was supposed to be meeting me the next morning to go hiking with me. So, I decided to stay overnight. It was also about to start raining. Not much you can say about Mountain Mommas. A little store. She cooked a lot of decent stuff. The cheeseburgers were good. They really had a bad attitude. They really don¢t like hikers, really don¢t care about hikers. The bunkhouses were freaky. They were these plywood shacks. 2x4¢s that were bare on the inside with plywood on them 10¢x10¢ square with 4 beds in each one. Just disgustingly filthy, disgustingly filthy mattresses. It was 15.00 to stay there. The good thing about it was the laundry was free to do. So, I did my laundry and I showered and repacked and I picked up the mail drop that I had sent there. Up to this point I had been carrying a spare water 20oz Gatorade bottle to make my coffee and stuff in. The only problem is that everything gets stuck in it because the sides aren¢t perfectly smooth and when I made coffee the goop from the coffee settles at the bottom and I guess the coffee would sit in that place for days. Doesn¢t matter how hard I try and wash it out. So, I this point I gave up the Gatorade bottle and I bought 2 light milk bottles. 16oz milk bottles. I also sent home my green polypropylene shirt that I¢d cut the sleeves off and my old maps. I ended up sharing the bunkhouse that I was in with a guy by the trail name ¢Walk About¢ whose real name is Peter. He was a lawyer from the Bahamas. A really nice guy who said he was well to do and could afford to take the time off. Also another kid in that bunkhouse, Indiana Slim. So, I stayed up late and watched Indiana try and do his laundry. He¢d gotten soaked coming in. The bed was too soft and I couldn¢t lay in it very properly. My knees hurt and I couldn¢t lay on my side so I spent a lot of the time on my back and probably snored like a freight train. Jim, whose trail name was ¢Chimp¢ also stayed in another bunkhouse by himself. Interesting guy. He doesn¢t socialize with the rest of the hikers. He hikes often off on his own, he never writes in the trail registers. But I talked to him and he¢s a really sweet and a really nice guy. He¢s by himself all the time because he apparently chooses to be like that. Also, the other George came through and decided not to stay.
Date: 2003-04-18
From: Mountain Mommas

To: Groundhog Creek Shelter
Miles today: 9.6
Weather: overcast clouds

It¢s a zero day so far. I called Eddie and he won¢t be here until at least 1pm. He was supposed to be here early at 7am. That's what time I got up and got ready. Went into a little country store here¢¦¢¦Mountain Momma¢s and ordered up some scrambled eggs with hash browns and sausage patties. As I sat there people started coming out of the woods. Wet. It had been raining all night so there were a lot of wet people coming through. Spiderman and Big Paw popped out and a section hiker named Aqua Diva who I¢d met at the very first shelter in the beginning of the Smoky's. She was just hiking the Smoky's. She was a special ed teacher who was doing the AT by section hiking. Slop also came out of the woods that morning..came in and ate breakfast. Basically, they all just ate breakfast and left. There also was an older couple that came through that were Still Bill and Tripper. Tripper was named Tripper because she had this really complex, expensive knee brace on her knee. Eddie finally showed up around 1:30 with Corona¢s and his friend Cindy who drove us to the trail in his old car along with another couple who hiked in from Mountain Momma¢s. The hike this day was 9.6 miles to Groundhog Creek Shelter. At the shelter were Still Bill and Tripper, Eddie, myself, this kid named Brian who was sleeping in a hammock and Healer (who was a doctor who requires a whole other story at some point).
Date: 2003-04-21
From: Hot Springs North Carolina

To: Zero Day
Miles today: 0.0

Zero day. I hung out in Hot Springs for the rest of the day after Eddy dropped me off. First he took me into a town where I had gotten all kinds of different, oddball stuff. Jason had been wearing a bandana, so I him bandana¢s. I got all oddball things. I also got a couple of ribeye steaks, a couple of sweet potatoes, some butter, charcoal and stuff like that. Jason and I ended up barbecuing. Having ourselves a little feast. Later that afternoon though I went to the pub and had ribs there that sucked. I had ordered something else but basically the place had been eaten out of food during the Easter weekend with everyone there. They did have a whole bunch of oysters a whole bunch of different ways. From raw on the shell to cooked with bacon and parmesan, which is what I had. Later that evening after Spiderman and I cooked the ribeye steaks, I took a walk back to the Pub and had some beers. Walkabout was at the bar. We sat there and talked. Hot Springs was a great town. Fun town to be in. Easy place to get stuck.
Date: 2003-04-22
From: Hot Springs North Carolina

To: Little Laurel Shelter
Miles today: 19.6
Weather: light rain

The hike was from Hot Springs to Little Laurel Shelter. Nice long hike. 19.6 miles. My altimeter showed elevation gains of 85,418 feet. I started the morning off by eating pancakes at the Smoky Mountains Diner. I tried to get out early which didn¢t happen. I left at 8:30. The trail starts getting messed up after Hot Springs. The first thing that happened, as you walk over the bridge, over the river, you have to jump over the railing on the right hand side and it¢s not very clear. There wasn¢t a blaze on the thing but I kept on walking. Walking over the bridge. Probably walking about a mile. There was no shoulder. Basically, I was walking on the road. As I was walking uphill I see people waving at me. I¢m thinking they¢re waving at me to get off the road because I was basically having to walk precariously on the road . Turned out that they were waving at me to turn around and go back. They had obviously figured out that I was going in the wrong direction. So, I turned around and walked back to the right place. I jumped over the railing and walked down. The trail at this point went to another NOC place on the river there. It was pretty screwy. It¢s hard figuring out exactly where to go. You walked along the river for quite a ways and then you switch back and start heading uphill. It was quite a climb going up with a very scenic view of Hot Springs. I ended up hiking almost 20 miles to Laurel Shelter because I could not find water. I really had wanted to stop sooner than that but I was completely out of water and there were no water sources anywhere. Right after dark is when I pulled in there. Which really sucked. It was a long, long day. Spiderman was already there. As was Wounded Knee Bill and Brittany's dad. The two girls were no longer with them. They had gone back home at Hot Springs. Bill and dad were gonna hike another few days. Also, in a tent there were Romeo and Tough Cookie. Now I heard that Tough Cookie has gotten off the trail. I don¢t know if Romeo was still on the trail or not. But..it was a crappy hike..crappy hike day.
Date: 2003-04-23
From: Little Laurel Shelter

To: Moon Road
Miles today: 15.8

From Little Laurel Shelter to Moon ? road. A total of 15.8 miles. I think mostly it was Spiderman who I saw off and on a good part of the day. It didn¢t work out that there were any shelters close by. So either we were going to hike a short distance or a long distance to a shelter. We had talked about it earlier and decided that we were both going to find a place along the road because the elevation maps showed that it was down fairly low and it was supposed to be really cold that evening and we did not want to be in that high elevation. So, we pulled in to the road and sure enough the flat area was there and there was a creek that ran along it as well. Which would have been a great situation except the place was a dump. People had been spending, I don¢t know how much time, dumping hundreds of cans of paint, a refrigerator, all kinds of appliances. There were shoes¢¦it was a dump. A dump. But, we figured we could find a decent spot, which we did. But we needed water and we were not about to touch that water out of the creek. So we hiked up to a house close by and the lady came out, her name was Ann, she thought that we were missing the trail. But in reality, we told her we were just looking for water. She was gracious enough to let us take some water from her tap. She told us a couple of stories while we were there. One of them being that¢¦ a long, long, long time ago the famous Greymount Atwood had stayed at her house and also that the trail had actually gone past her house at some time in the past and they ended up relocating it just over the hills. So to be walking through the woods instead of peoples yards. This day was the day I started feeling bad. I ended up the day with a stomach ache, which Jason also had a stomach ache unfortunately. We thought maybe we had caught something.
Date: 2003-04-24
From: Moon Road

To: Bald Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 15.6
Weather: overcast clouds

15.6 miles. Moon Road to Bald Mountain Shelter. This turned out to be a bad day for me. Again. The stomach ache returned and I had diarrhea. I had to basically stop 4 or 5 times to go to the bathroom. I had run out of toilet paper. I also started noticing about now that I was getting some pretty severe mood swings. I¢m usually pretty stable mentally, but I was starting to notice that I was really depressed and a few minutes later I¢d be really happy again. Also, physically I didn¢t feel good. I felt terrible. I had no energy. I started having bad thoughts about leaving the trail. Just popped out of nowhere. Then ten minutes later¢¦I was like¢¦what am I even thinking? At one point during the day I had looked on the trail companion and had seen that 2 miles down the road, on Sam¢s Gap, there was a little diner called Mile ? and Diane¢s grill. So I started walking down to it. Chip??? was about 12 mile ahead of me, walking also. We both were hitchhiking with our thumbs out. But this was obviously a place where no one was gonna stop because the actual walk was a steep, down grade with no shoulder. I ended up walking about a mile and a little truck was there and he picked me up. I didn¢t even have my thumb out at that point. But it was a guy named Big Ed who¢s daughter owned Diane¢s grill and he was basically running up and down the road. Actually, as he passed me he was taking Spiderman, who had also been hiking about an hour ahead of me, to get a cheeseburger. So, he took Spiderman up to the trail, turned around and got me. I sat down, had several cokes, a bacon-cheeseburger and fries and a BBQ sandwich with coleslaw which I wasn¢t able to eat completely. Went to the bathroom and picked up whatever paper towels I could from there for toilet paper which was really good because I had run out of toilet paper. Ed drove me back to the trail and I walked to Bald Mountain Shelter where Pez, Josh, Rachel and Dirty Frank ? were all staying overnight.
Date: 2003-04-25
From: Bald Mountain Shelter

To: Erwin, Tennessee
Miles today: 16.8

16.8 miles. Bald Mountain Shelter to Erwin, Tn. Again, another bad day. I started at 7:18 but I was very slow and had very low energy and the morning started out with big climbs which I could not take very well. It took me until 4 to get to Irwin. Again, I was having bad thoughts. It really didn¢t help that I started off in rain that morning. It was very cold and foggy. Again, no energy walking up the hills. I¢d have to stop every 5 minutes and catch my breath. I could tell the back of my legs were burning. It was very sore. I popped out at the woods at Uncle Johnny¢s. The place was infamous. They had taken it out of the trail book because Uncle Johnny had been described as needing mood stabilizing drugs. Spiderman was staying there and I had briefly considered tenting in the back of Johnny¢s there. But, I started walking down to the campground to pick up my packages (the campground was about a mile and a half away¢¦Nolichunky Campground). When I crossed the river, over the bridge there was a yellow van sitting there. Who was sitting in it but Healer and this lady. Turned out to be Janet. That¢s Miss Janet. She was sitting there waiting for a couple of people. Healer had fixed some guys ankle who had been stranded the previous week. They were slack packing that day to test out the ankle. They had dropped them off 8 miles up the trail on the north end. They were sitting and waiting for them to pop out of the woods. So, she offered to take me over to Nolichunky Campground to get the package. In the meantime, the doctor asked me if I wanted to share his room at the Super 8 hotel with him. Which I agreed to. It was very nice to have just one person to sleep with after all this time instead of a pack. Janet took us all over the place. She took us to an outfitter in Johnson City where I bought a tarp and pants to match my jacket because I was getting tired of the go-lite pants. You had to take your boots off to get the pants on and off. I was getting tired of that. The pre-set pants you could get on and off with out taking your boots off and plus they were breathable. Very nice. Anyway, at this place, at the outfitters, he decided that he was gonna have them replace his pack that had been damaged. Then she dropped us off at the Golden Corral for the all you can eat buffet which was just wonderful. It was a really good place. When we were done with that she dropped us, Hero and I, off at the Super 8 and I showered and ran down to the gas station. I picked up some beer and a bunch of candy bars and basically re-supplied and stuff. I also ran into Big Paw at Janet¢s. He¢d been staying at Janet¢s. He was very surprised to see me again. We keep running into each other nowadays. We aren¢t hiking anywhere close..but we keep running into each other.
Date: 2003-04-26
From: zero day

To: Zero Day
Miles today: 0.0

A zero day. I woke up early and walked over to Janets. Dave (Sticks), was at the Super 8. He was leaving as well. He had spent the night there. Went over to Janets and picked up my mail drop from the post office when it opened. Repacked the boxes. I got my laundry done. My knee was hurting very severely at this point. It had been hurting for awhile but it was almost unbearable to walk. There was a surgical supply place next to the laundry, which, when I first saw it, I was hoping to get in there and buy a knee brace like the type I had seen several people with on the trail with hinges on it. But they were not open. So, I went and did my laundry and while I¢m talking to the lady at the laundry mat and she started asking me different questions about the trail and I questioned her about her about the surgical place next door. I explained that I had wanted to get this knee brace with a hinge and she said ¢knee brace with a hinge?¢ Walked back to their van and came back with one of the exact knee braces that I was wanting to get. She gave it to me. She said some guy had given it to her and told her to give it to the Salvation Army and she didn¢t know what to do with it. So that was trail magic in the most interesting of ways. I walked around the town of Erwin for a few hours. I shopped, I had a thin and crispy ham, jalapeno and pineapple pizza at Pizza Hut. I made phone calls. Went back to Janet¢s that day. Decided to stay overnight. I stayed on her porch and we hung out basically. Watched a couple of movies that night, drank a lot of beer, did a lot of packing. Rocky slept on the back porch with me. This girl, who I had first run into at Mountain Momma's, that ended up getting hurt, was back on the trail again. Now, she had to go back home again because she was getting kicked out of her apartment. So she was gonna go home and fix that problem and get back on the trail again.
Date: 2003-04-27
From: Erwin, Tennessee

To: Cherry Gap Shelter
Miles today: 16.4
Weather: clear sky

My altimeter shows a reading of 98,378 feet. I hiked out of Erwin, Tn to Cherry Gap Shelter. A total of 16.4 miles. Got up early, at 6:30 and went back to have breakfast. Got shuttled back to the trail which I got on to at 8:30 am. Another hard, long walk and I was getting even slower at this time. In terms of going uphill. I was wearing the new knee brace which was not working very well and I had to keep stopping and adjusting it. I was trying everything at this point. I was taking some pills that Eddy gave me that were painkillers. I tried percocets, vicodins, whatever, to try and get rid of the pain, or walk through the pain but I was having serious problems with my knee. Not to mention that something was physiologically happening to me, in terms of, I was running out of energy. My resources were just shutting down. It was another day where I had taken pills and had to constantly stop.
Date: 2003-04-28
From: Cherry Gap Shelter

To: Grassy ridge on ? Mountain
Miles today: 17.0

 Cherry Gap Shelter to a grassy ridge on ? Mountain. A total of about 17 miles. Despite the fact that I was feeling terrible and despite the fact that my knee was killing me I was still putting on the miles. This day I put on 17 miles. In the previous days I was putting anywhere from 15-20 miles on and it was just killing me. I was definitely over hiking myself. This was another really rough day. A very, very rough day. I ended up not using the knee brace. I ended up throwing it away. There were some long uphills and I had to keep stopping. I also came up on the grassy ridge on ???Mountain and there was this beautiful view. You were overlooking this valley, I¢m not sure which city it was but it was maybe 3000 feet down and in the evening all the lights went on. The only problem with this was..sleeping on a grassy bald seems beautiful in the afternoon but at night they get unbelievably windy. The wind just roars and the ground cools down from the valley below and the wind comes whipping up from the valleys. I had to put earplugs on and it was very cold that night also. The wind did not help out. I became very concerned during the course of the night as the wind got stronger and stronger and stronger that my tent was going to blow away. It would have been a serious problem for me, a serious hypothermia problem because of the temperature and the 50 mph winds. One of the reasons I camped out here too and avoided camping at the shelter is, I just got fed up with the shelters. Got fed up with people saying I snore, with other people snoring..with the crowded situation. So, I¢ve made a decision to use the shelters to eat and only stay in one if necessary.
Date: 2003-04-29
From: Grassy Ridge on ? Mountain

To: North of Elk River
Miles today: 20.0

A total of 20 miles. This was a very screwed up hike. Some of the locals in this area just hated hikers. So they had a lot of problems with the locals. As a matter of fact, they had burned the shelter down 3 times and there had been several instances with the locals confronting the hikers as well. So, they had added four miles which wasn¢t well documented. That whole day I was trying to make 17 miles and it just seemed to take forever. Well the reason being is that they had added 4 miles to the trail at this point. Also, part of the problem with this section, with me anyway, was that somebody had put some fake blazes on some trees in the wrong direction, as a prank, that led uphill and led around in circles a couple of miles. I ended up going around in that circle for God knows how long. Till almost dark until I found my way out of there. I ended up hiking until 9:30 that night.
Date: 2003-05-01
From: Dennis Cove

To: Zero Day
Miles today: 0.0

A complete zero day for me. I hung out and decided to recover. Take one recovery day where I did nothing. I did end up getting a ride down to the little town and walked around town a bit. Went to the grocery store, went to the drug store and bought some supplies down there. I bought a new knee brace. I attempted to try a knee brace again because my knee was killing me and then I tried to hike back up which was all up hill going back up to Laurel Fork. Half way up I met this couple who were in a van and who were trying to section hike certain areas..they had gotten as far as New Hampshire the year before and the husband had gotten a hernia and they were going to try and get back on the trail this year and try to complete the rest of their journey north from New Hampshire to Katadhin.
Date: 2003-05-02
From: Zero day

To: Zero Day
Miles today: 0.0

Another zero day. Two zero days in a row. I can¢t remember what I did but I did something. I figured this was a good place to hang around. This was a good place to hand around and wait for Eddy as well. I talked to him on the phone and I talked to him about the slack packing and he agreed that it was probably a great thing for us to do. So I told him I¢d take another zero day and wait for him all the way up until Sunday which was the day that he would be able to come out and hike again. We also shuttled back into town again. I met a hiker named Yacker, whom I¢ll have more stories about at some point, and I went over to the seafood place and had some pretty good dinner there. Went back to the hostel. Back to the Laurel Fork Lodge.
Date: 2003-05-03
From: Dennis Cove

To: Johnson City
Miles today: 13.0

This was the day I slack packed 13 miles. Now slack packing means that you leave some or all of your pack. In this case, I took about 15 pounds and put on a new pair of boots that I had gotten from Montrail to replace my other boots that had worn out. It cost about 15.00 to slack pack. He was charging 15 bucks but he dropped us off at the dam. It was myself and a couple other hikers. I believe Mountain Dew was one of them. We walked back to Dennis Cove and Laurel Fork Lodge. It took me about 5 hours to walk back. It was a nice, nice little walk. We walked back and hung out. Then we went back into town again and ate the Chinese place again that evening. I had gotten offers of rides into town that evening because I had wanted to go to Johnson City, to the outfitters there. I decided that part of the thing about using a shelter would be better if I was using a hammock instead of a tent because then you don¢t have to look for level ground. You can just stop wherever you want to and find two trees and tie off and go to sleep. So, I had Eddy drive me into Johnson City to buy a hammock and also while I was there I ordered another pair of boots from Montrail. Which they did not have in stock, but I had them sent to Eddy¢s house to hold for me until I needed them again.
Date: 2003-05-04
From: Johnson City

To: ? Dam
Miles today: 16.0
Weather: overcast clouds

16 miles of slack packing. From Hwy. 91 to ? Dam. I slack packed with Eddy and Mountain Dew. We completed the 16 miles pretty blazing fast at that time which was 6 hours. So, we averaged almost 3 miles an hour. This is the day I went into Johnson City not the night before. Right after the slack packing thing Eddy drove us (myself and Mountain Dew) into Johnson City and got the hammock. Eddy stayed overnight in the cabin with me this evening too and he left very early in the morning to go back home.
Date: 2003-05-05
To: Damascus
Miles today: 19.0
Weather: light rain

19 miles. This is a slack pack to Damascus. Basically, what that means is that we had gotten dropped off at 91 and I had my tent and various other things. Not a tent..I had the hammock with me because I was intending not to go into Damascus. I ended up camping one mile short because I didn¢t want to go in and get stuck in town and pay the price by staying in a hostel or anything. So, I brought the hammock with me. It was my first night of sleeping in the hammock as well.