morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2009-06-20
From: camped

To: Brinks Road Shelter NJ
Miles today: 25.0
Weather: light rain

so the weather has been terrible, which is nothing new i guess. the last two days we didnt sleep in the woods, first we woke up to horrible pooring rain after we had tented so everything we owned was saoked, so we walked 5 miles into a town that had a motel right on the trail practically, so we stayed there. it was a crap-tastic of a motal, i mean stained rugs, old wood paneling and horrible comforters, it was awesome. so after we dried out everything we headed out and it was again a horrible day and we hiked into delawear water gap and stayed at a free church hostel which was really nice. so today we woke up and had 25 miles to the first shelter and it was pooring! hi-c and i didnt end up leaving until 11am, so we had a long day ahead of us. but it started off pretty nicely with a cooler full of trail magic we found at the trail head of a parking lot. it had sodas and chips and stuff, so that was nice.so we hiked all day in the rain and we had to wait until the rain calmed down or stopped to take breaks so we werent just sitting/standing there in the rain eating a candy bar or something. it stunk not having any shelters to stop in and rest the whole day. it was damn cold out too! i dont understand why at the end of june its so cold! so when we stopped we could only break for a little bit cause we'd get so cold just sitting there soaking wet.the hike was beautiful though. i mean it reminded me of the gracin highlands. i really like NJ so far. its crazy that we're in NJ already. any ways... they say nj is bear country, i saw one bear today so that was cool, it ran away scared so i didnt get a good look at it. we hiked over rattlesnake mountain too, which was soo nice. grassy rocky boulder mountain. it was nice doing that mountain in the rain cause we didnt have to worry about any snakes.when we got to the shelter, we didnt think wed have a spot cause it only sleeps 5. luckily i was able to squeeze in at the feet of everyone, which was sooooo great cause my tent pole broke recently so i dont have a tent right now. ugh. hopfully ill get that fixed before i get into a pickle.it was sooooo nice changing into warm dry clothes and eating some hot mac'n'cheese, mmm... i was realy happy to be there. but after doing a 25 in only 8 hrs, i surprisinly felt wonderful, i mean it felt like i had just hiked like an 18 or something, it was werid. i could have kept going to the next shetler which was 7 more miles, but since i had a spot in this shelter i stayed cause i knew it was ganna rain all night.
Date: 2009-06-24
From: The Out House (Mayers House) NY

To: Fingerboard Shelter, NY
Miles today: 26.0
Weather: light rain

so i did not want to get us this morning. i slept like poop the night before. so i ended up being the last to leave the shelter at 10am, not real late, but the last one. i ended up passing everyone though, so i made up the time.gnarwhale and i hiked together cause at 10 miles there was a homemade ice cream creamery only .2 miles off the trail. so we were ganna hit that up together. when we got to the raod we met another hiker being dropped off by his girlfriend who visisted him, he handed us a beer and gave us a ride the .2 miles to the creamery, it was awesoem! so i had two huge ice cream cones, it was absolutly amazing! then the new guy we met, his name is doc, gnarwhale and i hiked together the rest of the day. before we left we had another guy give us some more trail magic, another beer! it was great!so we hiked off and say 3 bear! i knwo we're in bear country now, which actually doesnt seem like it cause i havnt seen many bear, but we saw 3 different bear within 5 minutes of each other! it was crazy! they were everywhere! someone said "its like their circling in on us" lolthen we came accross a bunch of coolers in the woods filled with jugs of water which is always nice. we saw a cooler with cans and trash everywehere. the cans were all dented like tooth marks so we think a bear got into it. we came accross a man with only 4 more miles to hike and he walked us back to his truck, gave us beer, juice and soda, whipped his grill out and cooked up some cheeze calzones and fed us til we were sick! it was exactly what we needed to be able to have the energy to finish the last 4 miles!THEN he asked "do you guys want a trail bomb?" so we each took our first trail bomb which is like a car bomb. we had trail magic shots! trail magic bar really! it was crazy! sooo funny!!so when we hiked outa there to do our last 4 miles it was dark and we were saucy and it was raining, but we had each toehr so it was alright. it was really fun actually. we had a tough tough clime, like hand over hand clime that i think is the toughest one we've had so far. it was really fun though! we went through the 'lemon squeezer" which are two huge rocks that you walk through that just keep getting narrower and narrower, it was awesome. we strolled up to the shelter and there was a still a spot in there which i was happy about. it was a great day! i had a blast!oh and we saw the skyline of nyc today! it was sooo amazing to be 1/2 hr from nyc and to have walked here from GA, nuts!
Date: 2009-06-25
From: Fingerboard Shelter, NY

To: camped
Miles today: 14.0

so i dont know about ny and nj. first of all they are swamps. i mean, muddy, wet swamps that you jsut cant avoid! and then they have a rediculous amound of PUDS (pointless up and downs). the mountains only go 1500 feet, but the trail will take you straight up and straight down these suckers. i mean climbing and just stupidness. theres no view, nothing. you climb and bust your ass to get to the top just to come straight back down. its dumb. at one point there was flat ground ontop of a mountain and then this HUGE boulder rock that the trail just had to have us climbe over! so silly.today was a slow hike for me. the 26er yesterday with all those PUDS killed me. but there was blue skies out during parts of the day. (apparently there has been 19 of the 22 past days its rained, crazy stupid). any ways... gnarwhale, doc, hi-c and i hitched into town to get some food which was kinda a touch hitch. it took like 20 minutes or so. then we hitched back and this young guy who just graduated from college picked us up in his jeep, soo nice, so we're all squeezed in there adn we get pulled over! i felt so bad!!! this kid was sooo freakin nice. luckily he was a lutenant and flashed his military card so we got off. but the cop was like "just so you know, hitch hiking is illegal" lolso when we got back to the trail we all had some beers in our packs cause we only had about 2 more miles, but the 2 miles when straight up, I WAS DIEING!!! it was a bad idea brigning beers. but we got to the camp site and set up had some drinks, started a fire and then the thunder started adn the rain came down! my stupid tent pole is broken so i had to get creative on how to set it up. it kept me... eh, so so dry. i mean my hair was wet in the morning and everything i owned was wet, but it was better than nothing. oh and the damn misquitoes! i have soo many bug bites, tis horrible! i those of you who know me, know i have no self control when it comes to scratching. so my legs and arms look horrible!! i cant stand it!
Date: 2009-06-26
From: camped

To: State Park Shelter, NY
Miles today: 0.0

so today was my frist yellow blazeing... ill get to that in a second...it was another wonderful day of rain. i dont remember the last day we had without rain. i just wake up in the morning and think to myself "whelp... its ganna rain at some point today"i hiked out with doc and we hit a gas station that was literally on the trail about 4 miles into our hike. it was great, we got soda and ice cream, mmm... loved it!so the sun came out for a little bit today. doc and i decided to have break by a stream where the sun was hittin the rocks, so that was nice. my back was steaming cause of the all the sweat evaporating in the sun.so the hike today was like the past few weeks, muddy, wet, the PUDDY. but it did seem to have some more flat areas than i was used to. we were shootin to camp at this state park where there is an area AT hikers can tent for free. the shelter was too far and i didnt wanna push myself to get there. so one more night in a crappy broken tent i guess.well, doc and i thought we were on the raod that takes us to the camping, it was sopposed to be 1 miles east of the trail. so we're walking and all of a sudden this HUGE storm comes through and its pooring on us and we've been wakling way too long for one mile. so we start knocking on poeple doors and no one his home apparently. it took about the 5th to get someone to awnser the door and know what we were talkign about. and i guess we were still 3 miles away! which didnt make any sense with my watch at all. usually i keep a pretty consistent pace of 3 miles and hr and we all thought we should have been on the right raod. so this man drove us to the camping area (which was awesome cause i did not want to hike another 3 miles after walking us and down that raod for like an hr in the pooring rain)so we get there and there was this huge pavilion picnic area that was only for registered guests who sign up to use it. but we said, screw it, no one is here and we slept ont he picnic tables and layed all of our wet gear out and i didnt have to sleep in my soaking wet tent. i was sooooo happy, i could die!so when started out as a horrible adventure trying to find this place, turned out to be alright since we didnt have to sleep in the rain. so the yellow blazing is when you drive the distance in a car and not hike it. so i yallow blazed those 3 miles and honestly... i dont care. i walked at last 2 miles up and down that raod and then i know i have walked several more miles to and from shelters and getting lost and all that. so... no worries...
Date: 2009-06-28
From: State Park Shelter, NY

To: Mnt. Algo Lean-to, CT
Miles today: 21.0

so ive moved into another new state today! its pretty exciting! ny and nj are over and i am happy about it. all it was for me was rain rain rain, mud mud mud. so hopfully itll turn up from here. and so far so good, i havnt gotten rained on in CT yet! only been 1 day, but, hey, thats pretty good.last night i walked on further than everyone else cause i felt like a rock star and just wanted to keep hiking. so i did a 23 and felt awesome! it was nice walking alone all day, i hadnt done it in a while. i walked to the shelter and found two weekend hikers there, these two girls, they were so nice!they gave me food and we talked all night, it was really nice. so i headed out for a 21-er today, not too bad, but i was pooped. i think its cause i didnt sleep at the last night. i mean, i may have slept... oh... maybe 4-5 hrs, it was horrible. 4-5 hrs is a nap for me.so i started out and the sun was out and it was nice. i met a father with his daughter and son and i hiked with them for a while. they were sooo nice! great family! the little boy "tigger" was his trail name, may have been the cuttest thing ive ever seen. i was moving pretty slow while hiking with them, but it was really nice. i enjoyed it alot. i pushed ahead after a while cause i wanted to sit down for a break and there was snickers and milky way bit size candy bars at the shelter, mmm trail magic! delicious!i kept on moving to the next shelter only 4 miles away and someone gave me a plum, which was amazing! and i met this ridgerunner (a person who works for the trail that goes out for 10 days at a time and cleans the trail up, helps people out, that kind of thing). she was awesome! (i cant remember her name right now, sorry!!!) but i lvoed her! i wish i coulda hiked with her longer. she had done the PCT (pacific crest trail) out west, which i really wanna do. shes planning on doing it again in 2011, so ill have to talk with her about that... hmm... i left her with about 7 miles to go and for soem reason i was beat. imean, dragging ass, face hanging, hunched over, beat. i dont know why. im thinking it wasnt enough food and water i had that day. so i was singing my "the wonderful sign" song i made up cause i just couldnt wait to see that sign. i finially reached the shelter and i was the last one to fit in. no thru-hikers there, just section/weekend hikers. thast two nights in a row i hadnt camped out with any thru-hikers, werid.it was nice to be at the shelter but the bugs were horrible! i cant stand the bugs! even while hiking they were driving me crazy. for some reason the stuipd little nats hover around your eyes and ears. so about... 3-7 times a minute i have to swat my hand to get the bugs away. they blurr your vision when they are around your eyes, they land on your eye lashes, sooo annoying. and then they'll just fly right into your ear and at some points i think i am goign to loose it they drive me so crazy! i want to know why they like our eyes so much, its werid.
Date: 2009-06-30
From: Mnt. Algo Lean-to, CT

To: shelter in MA 
Miles today: 31.0

so i made a decision, i decided to leave the gang and shoot up and try and catch crank and spaceman. i dont wanna leave everyone, but the hike is coming down the last 1-2 months and there are people i really wanna spend some time with still. so its ganna suck, im going to be exhusted for the next couple of weeks, but i think i should do this.so today i woke up later than i wanted to seeing that i had 31 miles to walk, but i pushed on and just basically walked constinatly all day. which i guess wasnt' too bad. i stopped a couple of times for like 10 minutes to eat some food. there was an AT detour today, we had to follow these bright orange detour signs with white AT blazes on them, it kinda sucked actually cause it was a lot of raod walking, easy miles though cause it was flat as hell, but really boring. i entered massachusettes today. crazy how fast i went through CT. it only took me a couple of days, it is only like 50 miles though. it poored on me today, i mean came down poored! i slept by myself in a shelter for the first time too. thank god no one was there cause i got there at like 11pm, soaked to the bone while it was thundering and lightening out. so i just wanted to have a pack explosion and just hang all my clothes up and be loud and make some food, so i was really glad no one was there.when i was making some food this little mouse (it was so cute!) just walked right up to me in my sleeping bad (i was like sitting up in my bag cooking some pasta) and it almost walked right up on my lap while i was sitting there with my headlamp on! i couldnt believe it! it must of smelled my food or something. so i said, "hey, what r u doing?!" it when i spoke it jumped and ran away. the cuttest little mouse though!so when i woke up the next morning the worst thing in the entire world, was having to put on my wet cold clothes, cause obviously they didnt dry during the night with all the moisture in the air. my god it was horrible. i mean, horrible! cause you cant just hiking imidiatly after putting them on cause you have to finish packing your dry clothes in your pack, so your standing there freezing! god i hated it.
Date: 2009-07-01
From: shelter in MA 

To: shelter in MA
Miles today: 30.0

so its been a while since ive updated my journals, so these next few wont have the shetler names in them cause i cant remember where i stayed and ill probebly skip around on days. any ways... its been raining constinatly, and i dont mean just rain, i mean pooring down torential rain where all you own gets soaked. its kinda bumming me out man. in the month of june i think we only had 4 days without rain. ugh. oh well.ive been doing alright with the long days untill recently. i mean, i could not move. just putting one foot infront of the other on completly flat ground was soo hard to do and i was just moving soooo slow. my body is having a tough time. i dont think i have another 30 miler in me,.
Date: 2009-07-03
From: shelter in MA

To: shelter in VT
Miles today: 28.0

so ive made it into VT and my god is it beautiful! i mean, beautiful. its so amazing to watch the forest change as i head north. now there are pine trees everywhere, mossy rocks and pine needle covered ground. its just really amazing. it looks like its straight out of a magazine. we've hit another trail that goes along the AT for about 70 miles and its called the Long Trail. so the trail has been really congested. its werid going from lots of people i know, to being alone, to tons of people again but no of which i know. they are mostly all LT hikers, not many thru-hikers up here.but today i did meet T and A. Tom and Anna. they are freakin awesome! they're this 30 yr old couple whove been married for 6 yrs and i love them. they are so wonderful together and just amazing individuals and amazing couple. it was exactly what i needed at this time. i mean, ive been alone and rained on for days and days and then ran into tons of people i dont know that are LT hikers and then i meet T and A. they are so great. i walked into town with them and we had some breakfast at a diner which was absolutly amazing. things are becoming more pricey though as im going north, oh well. they were staying in town though waiting for a friend to come in so i decided to push on another 17 miles or so. im still trying to catch crank who is like 4 days ahead of me, not so bad. i was loosing to push until i met T and A and they encouraged me to keep going which was nice.
Date: 2009-07-04
From: shelter in VT

To: shelter in VT
Miles today: 17.0

so i climed a pretty good sized mnt today. it was soo nice out too! i mean blue skies, sun was shining and no threatening clouds, it was amazing. there was this steap clime in the middle of the day that was pretty rockey and straight up and once you got up there and turned around the view was amazing. and it was about 7pm which has to be one of my favorite times of day to hike, so it was just beutiful, i could have sat up there all day,b ut i didnt wanna do any night hiking. so i got to the shetler and there werent many people there, only one other man, which i was surprised cause of all the LT hikers. it was by a stream so that was really nice. the next day i layed in the sun on some huge rocks in the middle of the stream and just realixed. it was so nice to have a sunny day, i forgot what it felt like to feel the warmth of the sun. ahhh... so nice.
Date: 2009-07-06
From: shelter in VT

To: shelter in VT
Miles today: 16.0

so i met a father who is thru-hiking out here and his daughter is out for a week hiking with them. they are soooo nice, so ive been hanging with them the past couple of days. its really nice meeting new poeple for a change. cause for a while i was with the same poeple and i pretty much knew everyone around me, so its nice.so apparetly, i passed spaceman cause he had to get a lymes disease test in town and we never saw each other!! i am sooo mad!!! i better see that guy again casue he was one of the reasons i pushed up. if he has lymes disease thoug he'll have to take at least a full week off if not two. there have been a lot of cases out here this yr. i guess last yr and this yr its been on the rise and some poeple even got balls palsey (spelling?) when half your face goes numb from having lymes disease. it 95% of the time comes back after like 2-3 weeks, but man is that scary. i saw a big fat porky pine today!!! he was soooo cute. it was early in the morning and he was just trotting down the trail and i was walking behind him. he finally got spooked and jumped to the side. he was big, sooo freakin cute! it poored on us again today. i was soo close to the shetler i was stopping at for lunch too. like 1 mile away and it was thundering and the clouds were rolling in and i just keep saying "just let me get to the shelter and then ill wait out the rain" well that didnt happen, of course. and it came down! it was actually tarrifying! i got stuck right under the heart of the storm, like when the thunder and lightening hit at the same time and you swear it hit a tree like 20 ft away. i was actually running down the trail to get to the shetler faster cause i was soo scared. it was soooo scary i cant even explain. then i came to a line of telephone pole wires that i had to go under while this huge storm was going on. i stood there and waited for a crack of thunder/lightening to hit so i had to the maximum amount of time to get across and just booked it. it was scary. i rolled into the shetler just soaked, waited it out and then hiked onto a diner that was .3 miles off the trail. so at least i had that to look forward to. and while i was eating i changed my clothes and the sun came out and my clothes actually dried! so that was cool. after that i hiked on for another 9 miles and went to this secret shetler. the one that is listed in my companian in near a road taht i guess lots of local people go there and herass hikers and party there and stuff and they recoment that hikers done stay there. so this man who lives near there built a shelter and hikers tell each other about it when they get closer to the area and its hidden like .4 off the trail, it was so nice, even had a privy and everything. i was so glad i got there cause about 2 minutes after i arrived it started raining again. so i lucked out that time.
Date: 2009-07-10
From: shelter in VT

To: velvet rock shelter, NH
Miles today: 23.0
Weather: clear sky

so ive entered another state today!! whoo hoo! NH, very exciting. and i found out that crank is only a shelter ahead of me, so im totally going to catch him im just so happy that all this crap was worth it. i met a ton of new thru-hikers too which is really cool. im meeting all these people whos names ive been seein in the registers for so long. its great to put a face to a name. oh yeah, and it rained again today...
Date: 2009-07-11
From: velvet rock shelter, VT

To: firemans cabin shelter, NH
Miles today: 21.5

so i decided to push on an extra 7 miles and clime smarts mnt cause i heard crank was staying there. today was pretty nice hike too. i met a dude named chip who i hiked with the entire day and he was really cool. we talked and i felt like i knew the guy all along. then there was a sign that said "free water and ice cream bars" and pointed an arrow to a house. so i knocked on the door and this old man answerd and i said "is this where the free ice cream is?" and he laughed and said , "well yes it is my dear" and showed me to the back porth and came out with a glass of water and an ice cream sandwich. he was soo cute! he's been giving free ice cream to hikers for yrs and my companion book even lists him in there! he was soo nice. actually told me that crank left his house only 2 hrs ago!so after my ice cream i headed on out to clime smarts. it was tough but it was awesome! the skies cleared and from 5-730pm it was such a great day! there were lots of large flat rock areas on the mnt where the trail would lead you out on a ridge, so i kept having view and view. i just really liked this hike today for some reason. so i get to the shelter and crank left 20 minutes ago (arg) and i had nothing left in me, i couldnt do another 6 miles which is what he was doing. but i met tons of new people again and tons of southbounders. tons. i guess this is the time they start coming through. its cool meetin them cause they tell you wahts ahead and get you all excited for the whites and maine and everything. but i met topo, dude, wize kid, and tons more nobos that i started hanging with for the next week or so.there was a fire tower near the cabin too so we all watched the sun set from the tower and it was awesome. freezing though up that high in the mnts with the wind, but it was really nice to see a sun set. it was been a long time since i saw one.