Date: 2006-04-18
From: Partnership Shelter

To: Random Campsite
Miles today: 12.6

Last night, I wrote about Granite and her fear of zombies. I thought that conversation proved that we were all losing it a little bit, but I was wrong. It gets much worse. And we are only a month and a half in.This morning we all woke up slowly at the glorious Partnership Shelter and waiting for us down at the bottom of the ladder was, oh so glorious, left over, cold pizza from the night before. And pepsi! Amazing breakfast as we all huddled around (the morning was a bit chilly). The conversation slowly started to lose intelligence as it seems to do more often than not lately.We were joking about how all of us had seen the ponies with the exception of Bugs. She somehow missed them, and we are not letting her forget it. But somehow we got from Bugs totally missing the ponies to the topic of unicorns. Then the conversation got serious and we debated on whether unicorns could take on ponies and who would really win. Bugs was confused as she thought ponies were the same size as unicorns so it could clearly be a fair fight....but we were quick to inform her of her misunderstanding. Unicorns were more like horses we explained to her, and I thought, probably more like a thoroughbred. She seemd to grasp it at that point, but we lost her when she asked "Don't they have wings?" No! we all said, those are pegasus, duh! And in the end it was unanimous that a pony had no chance against the mighty unicorn especially out here in the Appalachians.Our minds have wandered and we have forgotten how to draw them back. You would be surprised how often serious conversations switch to such things as unicorns and how to lasso them. I can't wait to see what brilliant things we have to say by Maine. But I'm sure unicorns will be old news by then.We did, however, intend to hike farther today after our resupply in Atkins. But plans are so hard to follow out here and you end up camping a mere 1/4 mile from an interstate, in between two farms wondering if the locals are gonna get mad, because their dogs sure sound ticked off..Leaving Partnership Shelter was hard in the morning. We were all moving slowly, wishing Atkins was closer than 11.5 miles. But, eventually we got going and did what we are out here to do. The first half of the hike was maddening. Constant ups and downs and we had to express our feelings about it every so often.But the second half was a breeze. Gorgous...farmland and an old school house. No pointless ups.   It was just the kind of hike you want right before town. And the best part of the hike was stepping out onto the road and seeing half the gang loitering outside the gas station with soda!   MiniMart!   Score!For two hours we hung out outside of the gas station waiting for the rest to mosey in. We must smell, or at least I must, because folks wouldn't stand too close when on line at the counter..oh well..We have cherry pepsi and salsa doritos.When Pebbles strolled in, we decided to finally be productive and find a ride to the grocery store. Pebbles wasn't feeling well and decided to take some nice folks up on an offer to stay at their place. But they couldn't take us all so we agreed to camp just outside of town and meet her back in town in the morning.Thumper, Swansons, Yeti, Granite and I got a ride in the back of a pickup then got a ride back from the same guy...in a different car.   People are awesome. We had some dinner, got a few beers (of course) and hiked out about a mile and found a nice flat little area for all of us.Now, real quick for a little back story. Snake's shoes had been bothering him for awhile and at Partnership Shelter he decided they were done. The wonderful people at Mount Rogers Outfitter in Damascus agree to bring him a pair of shoes, but they wouldn't be there until afternoon. So we hiked out and he was going to meet us later tonight or tomorrow. Pebbles left him a note at the trail head across from the gas station about our meeting for breakfast and we figured we would see him then.So, Swansons, Thumper, Yeti, Granite and I were drinking by our tents near the road. By now it was really dark and suddenly we saw a light flash on the trail. Being so close to the road it made us a little nervous and we all ducked and grew extremely nervous. Don't really know why, a little worried about locals I guess. The light came closer and it was obvious they were looking for someone. I was ducking, I'll admit it. Then thumper called out "who's there?" And we hear, "It's snake". Oh man, we all breathed a sigh of relief and turned our lights back on. No deliverance for us tonight. We were very excited to see Snake. It was a very good ending to the day. We stood around and told jokes for awhile then disappeared into our little tent village, falling asleep to the sweet sounds of 18 wheelers.