Date: 2011-05-08
From: Wayah Bald Shelter

To: NOC
Miles today: 16.5
Weather: light rain

I woke, did normal morning drill and made breakfast. I had a really nice conversation with Timber about life. She was from Canada and was attempting a thru-hike before she got married.Out on the trail, I continued to play leap frog with Do What? At one point when Do What? was far out-of-sight in the lead, he came across a rattler on the trail. I wasn't there but later learned he couldn't get the snake to move off the trail. He tried throwing things at it and finally resorted to using his walking stick to move it off the trail making the snake quite mad. Then two SoBo hiker men came and saw the mad snake just as I and Bandit came around the corner NoBo. The two men hollered for me to catch my dog and then they tried to get the snake off the trail. At one point, they said it was ok to go past, that the snake was 2' off the trail. So I put Bandit on his leash and was going to go past a little off the other side of the trail. But when Bandit and I got near the snake, Bandit wouldn't walk "off" the side of the "narrow" trail. Out of fear for his safety, I pulled backward really hard on his leash to retreat and Bandit backed up toward the snake. Then his collar came off over his head and I fell backwards into the bushes. The snake was only 1' off the trail. I was like a turtle on its back and was unable to get up with my pack on. So I unbuckled the pack and picked myself up. We watched the snake crawl across the trail and off into the woods. Whew!Moving on down the AT, we reached Wesser Bald early. Do What? was there wondering what I was going to do. He was afraid to stay at the shelter alone and afraid he wouldn't make NOC before dark. I said I was going to NOC and he lit out on the trail ahead of me! LOL Bandit and I had a quick lunch and headed for NOC. We were later to regret NOT having gotten water here at Wesser Bald in our rush to get to NOC.Two miles before the Ruefuss Shelter, we ran out of water with no hope of resupply. Boy, it is no fun to be thirsty. At Ruefuss, we found Do What? hiding in his tent saying, we'd never get to NOC before dark. There were also 5 fire fighters there at Ruefuss that we'd never met. We filled up on the water at Ruefuss and headed to NOC leaving all behind. We ran into two college boys coming back to Ruefuss from NOC. They gone from Ruefuss to NOC for dinner.We got to NOC at 7:30 p.m. and everything was closed. We found a lady in the restaurant who got us a private room in the hostel that cost us $45!!! Ouch! We had to be in the private room if we were to have a dog. AND I received NO towel for the shower. Rats! I ended up using Bandit's camp towel for a nice hot shower. The private room was nice with only two beds. I had to admit it WAS nice being in a room all to myself as Bandit and I slept much better that wayIt was a bit of a hike from the restaurant to the hostel that required us to cross over the raging river, walk past the public boat landing a climb a bit of a hill. Now, while in a public place such as this I always keep Bandit on a leash, often on the trail he is off-leash. As we passed the public boat landing, there was a German Shepard there with his owner. The Shepard was off-leash and proceeded to charge at Bandit in a threatening manner from quite a distance away. It was very scary. Bandit was both on-leash and carrying a heavy pack, not a good scenario to defend himself. So I hollered at the dog and raised my hiking poles in a threatening manner at the dog. If it had gotten close enough I would have used those poles on the dog, something I really didn't want to have to do. The owner' called her Shepard back to her and apologized but I was very shaken. But Bandit didn't appear worried so I calmed down too.Finally, I whipped up a quick dinner for myself in the Common Kitchen area and fed Bandit. He ended up with most of my dinner as well and I polished off my desert. Then it was off to bed. Yeah!!!