Date: 2010-07-24
From: RPH Shelter

To: RPH Shelter Work Day
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: broken clouds

Day 5 - we decide to zero today to let muscles rest and take inventory. We are carrying too much food...and other stuff.Lessons learned after 4 days...What we have eaten so far...Day 1 - dinner BP Beef Stew and tea. Very good.Day 2 - brkfast eggs & refried beans. Coffee. Excellent. Lunch - trailmix and jerky Genevieve loves it best she's ever had. But only eat half a bag trailmix and quarter bag jerky. Robert has peanut butter on crackers with dried milk. Excellent milk. Dinner - mac & cheese with split pea soup. Both good but the mac is heavy, complicated to assemble and takes a lot of time (fuel) to cook. Very satisfying though.Day 3 - brkfast eggs and cheese grits with coffee. Good. We give away half can (one dozen) eggs, curried lentils, black bean soup, refried beans to "Gouda". Lunch - Genevieve has trailmix and jerky. Robert skips lunch. Dinner - more BB pasta & cheese it is heavy and got to get rid of it. Hummus - excellent! We have leftovers and save for tomorrow pre-dinner snack.Day 4 - Brkfast - leftover mac & cheese. Still some remaining. BP Chicken and Rice with Green Peas. Very good. Lunch - trailmix & jerky about half bag. Dinner - BP Chicken Breasts with Rib Pieces and mashed potatoes. Genevieve prepares two extra serves of mashed potatoes.Day 5 - brkfast peanut on crackers 2 each. Lunch - BP freeze dried Chana Marsala, beef jerky and dried carrots. Quite good. Dinner - ramen noodles followed by BP Santa Fe chicken - that's a winner! We tried the freeze dried ice cream sandwich but I let Genevieve finish it off. WasnKt quite the same.Food remaining:BP meals - 5Peanut Butter - 2/3 of 18 oz jarQuick noodles - 4 bagsTrailmix - 3 full bagsJerky - 3 1/4 # bagsDried milk - about 3 tbls. Dried milk is great!!Grits - one bagOats - one bagCouscous - one bagMashed Potato - total - 2 servingsMiso - 2Parmesan - half bagBrewer's Yeast - half bagDried peas - one bagDried carrots - one bagBP Dried Beans - two bagsBrown sugar - one bag unusedOlive oil - half bottle (gave one bottle to "Gouda"Coffee an tea - spot on tea. Could have more coffee.Coco mix - 4Chamomile tea - 6Condiments - way too much. Heavy bag and not being consumedEquipment...Trekking poles - essential. Especially for slippery wet down slopes.Extra dry socks - essentialShorts vs long pants - most people wear shorts but I'm switching to long pants at Wingdale mail supply (wed). My legs are getting scratched and bit. The biggest concern from the thru hikers is Lyme disease several have caught it. The sulfur and deet seem to be working for us. Boots - most thru hikers have switched to light boots or shoes. But most are on their third pair after 1400 miles.Food - too much food but after we gave some away we got it down about right.Cookgear - can simplify a lot here. May consider leaving the wisk behind next go. But we are the talk of the trail with our gourmet selections.Training - hmmm...worth consideration.OK - sorry for the detail but wanted to capture it. Here's the days events. We plan to zero and rest. Start by washing everything and setting packs, boots, socks and everything else in the sun to dry. Takes all day. We stuff our boots with paper. There is a phone book here at the wilderness shelter and we tear out the white pages assuming they are not useful unlike the yellow pages which can be used to order pizza. Everything is just cozy. We have the shelter to ourselves. Well...about 9:00 Tim and Dave show up. Tim and Dave are the Pres and VP resp. Of the RPH Shelter AT trail. It is Saturday and they are supposed to have work crew but no one shows so guess what? Thatks right we get recruited. Our job is to mix bags of mortar and then carry it down the creek bank in buckets to seal and patch the stonework at either end of the new bridge. That takes us to about 1:00. Tim wants to keep on working since he didn't even bring a lunch so we know it wasn't on his agenda but Dave convinces him to take a break. We share some texas Hilje jerky with them and they really like it. The workday is not over. The next task is to haul a 14 foot 12" diameter log out of the creek up a steep slope using a 1/2 inch steel heavy duty hand winch and chains. Genevieve muscled the winch while Tim, Dave and Roberr wrestled the log and enginnered some make shift slides and rollers. I have pictures. Took us about 2 hours. By this time it is closing in on 4:00 and I had planned to do some fishing. Of course Tim wants us to help him lug all the tools up the hill. But Dave is kind and thanks us for the hard work. Well we are proud of the days work and feel like we own a small piece of the AT. Tim says you can't catch fish in that creek but I prove him wrong and catch about 6 small (tiny) bass on a small (#18) white fly. We finish up dinner and repack dry packs ready to go in the morning 6:30 to see the sunrise. Oops out of battery. See you later. Thanks reading our trailjournal. Bea and 1.0.