Date: 2013-05-16
From: Mountaintop Camp past Vandeventer Shelter

To: TN Hwy 91 at Shady Valley, TN (to Damascus)
Miles today: 8.6
Weather: overcast clouds

As predicted, I didn't open my eyes for the sunrise even though my tent was facing the East just in case I wanted to open the fly of my tent to witness the beauty of a sunrise over the mountain overlooking Lake Watauga. I stayed up late again "catching up" on my journal, which seems to be a bad habit of mine lately that I have to cure before I lose my readers, and I promise I will do better once I get something to charge my phone. We made a fire and had breakfast, getting our usual late start to the trail. I couldn't believe we were still going up when we started hiking, thinking we were already at the top of the mountain, which was illustrated as a small hill in AWOLs guide. The climb didn't last long, as we finally started going down again. We stopped at the camp we originally headed for last night and filled our water bladders, and saw our new friends from Tennessee-Chattanooga who had just started hiking the day before yesterday. One had gotten sick and was throwing up that night, just the second day on the trail...not a good start. He hadn't even had time to find his hiker's stench yet! It was a beautiful hike though as this whole area had been since we arrived at the lake the day before. We also passed more of the Warren Doyle group. I did learn a little more about this, that Warren Doyle had hiked the trail something like 16 times or something, and they were all slack packing, as the association supported them with food and supplies and such. I'll read more about it and maybe explain it later. When we got toward the end of the hike we came across more hiker magic. There was a steel box bolted to a tree with a cooler. Only when we opened it there was one Pepsi version that was something equivalent to a diet drink. I offered to share it with Thistle, but since she doesn't like diet drinks and gave it to me. Knowing her, she may have done it just to be nice. I was thirsty, so I drank it down like it was my last drink of water. Nothing tastes better than a cold drink on the trail when you're hot and exhausted. When we got to Highway 91 we discussed whether to keep going or go into Damascus. We didn't talk about it long, as we really wanted to get there so we could get a nice tent spot before they were all gone. Just when we arrived a pickup truck stopped an our old friend Yukon jumped out with a "Damascus" sign in his hand. Evidently he had just hitched to there on his way as well. We talked to a guy at the parking lot next to the road who was waiting on his wife who was on the trail. He was a former through hiker who didn't have room to take us, but still offered to let us sit on his tail gait if we couldn't get a ride. We stuck out our thumbs and soon got a ride down to the local store where we would have a better chance of getting a ride into town. It was Thistles first ride in back of a pickup truck, and you could see on her face that she was absolutely thrilled. It was a Kodak moment, so we took pictures she would always remember. We tried again at the store and got a ride in no time from a "Mental Health Professional". She was real nice, but kept opening her back window to talk to us while flying down the road. It's like something you would see in a movie where the taxi driver is turning around while driving 90 miles per hour. I was a bit on the scary side and I didn't want to die that day. We arrived quickly and safely, however, so all was good. When we arrived we saw tent city, and that's exactly what it was. There were tents everywhere, and it seemed a lot of them were organized into groups with theme names. Hikers were partying all over, but no one was carrying beer. I found out that there was an ordinance or something that required all beer be placed in a cup, I guess so it didn't look like everyone was carrying exactly what they were carrying. There was no mistaken what they were carrying, because you could see it in their dazed looks and wobbling walks. I was surprised that I didn't recognize most of the hikers. It always seemed I knew so many hikers on the trail, but guess I didn't realize how many hikers were actually on the trail. I did see a smattering of people I knew here and there, however, and ran into some old friends I hadn't seen in a while, Sunshine and Cannibal Curious. They gave me the low down on tent city, what was going on, where to go, etc. They being the giving people they are walked a long way to their tent just to start Thistle and I off with a cool beverage, something we really needed to get started. We decided to lay our backpacks down to look for a good spot to lay our tents. Soon after we ran into Indy who told us about a place where he was tenting. It was a spot about 2 miles down the "Creeper Trail", where they had found a secluded spot. He was camping with Mountain Man and Nomad, Piper, Morris the Cat, Stupid, and a couple of hikers I hadn't met yet. That sounded great, camping with old friends. We were on our way to the camp to put our stuff down when we ran across Miss Janet. I had heard so much about her but had never met her in the flesh. She provides rides for hikers and provides all kinds of support, just because she enjoys it. She's like the ultimate trail angel, only she does it full time. What a great person!. She was really nice, and gave us a ride to the Church that was giving free supper to hikers. Because we had just arrived, we didn't have a ticket and all tickets were gone. We were lucky, however, because as we were walking by this young lady who was taking tickets asked if we wanted to eat. We explained we didn't have tickets, but she let us in anyway. We had a great dinner of chicken, corn, beans and desert. It tasted soooo gooood!We started walking toward the camp and got a ride in no time. There were a lot of hikers there, so it was easy to hitch. We got to camp and it was everything described. It was a cozy place with a nice fire surrounded by tents. It's like we had our own tent city, and knew everyone there! We set up our tents and Indy told us about Biscuit. Apparently, he was an older fellow who was at our camp who unexpectedly passed away the day before. He didn't complain about anything, but went to someone's hostel or house or something and just passed for unknown reasons. That was a bit creepy to me, so I can only imagine how the guys who were there with him felt. He is the fourth person to pass on the trail. Recall I had just heard about someone dying of a heart attack just days before when I was at Black Bear Resort. We stayed at our camp the remainder of the night and decided to take in Damascus the next day instead. We were comfortable being there with friends we hadn't seen in a while. We just enjoyed the fire, drinking, laughing and cutting up enjoying each other's company. It's always good to be with friends you know, even though when you think of it, I didn't know any of these people two months ago and it seems like we've known each other forever. That's the beauty of the trail.