Date: 2013-04-29
From: Uncle Johnny's Hostel

To: Uncle Johnny's Hostel
Miles today: 0.0

After a great night of sleep I awoke and crawled out of my tent at 7AM. Steph was up too and moving about. I went to the hostel's front porch to hang out and charge my electronics. Steph walked out of the office with a cup of coffee and I immediately wanted some too. She loaned me a dollar and I caffeinated myself. A little later Wales and the Patriot showed up. Soon after a random white van pulled up and the driver said, "Who wants a ride to town?". That's the hiker equivalent of who wants a piece of candy, and of course we did! I wasn't prepared to go to town, but I hopped in with just the few dollars in my pocket. Our first stop was the post office. The Patriot needed to mail a mother's day card. I took the opportunity to ask if they'd give me new stamps for the book of wet stamps in my pack from yesterday. Sadly the answer was no. We then crossed the street to Walgreens to pick up some random items. After checking out they gave me a coupon for $3 off a $10 purchase. I gave it to Wales, who was behind me, and he was able to make immediate use of it. I then noticed that the Combos¢¢ I bought didn't ring up as two for one, as labeled. The cashier fixed it and I received a coupon for $5 off a $20 purchase. I gave that to Steph and she used it. By then it was lunch time and we walked the 1.2 miles to Subway for lunch. Our path took us down Main Street and I kept my eyes open for my bicycles' chain from the other night, but to no avail. Steph and I made it to subway first and started our orders. Right then Wales and the Patriot showed up and wanted to go to pizza hut's lunch buffet instead. I decided to keep my sandwich for dinner and we walked across the parking lot to pizza hut. We ate delicious "fresh" salad and lots of pizza and pasta. Afterwards I called Nettrans, the local mass transit, and ordered an on demand shuttle back to the hostel. We gave ourselves 45 additional minutes to shop and went to dollar general. I picked up some more small size candy bars for hiking, a block of cheese, and a glue stick for my wet stamps. Soon the shuttle arrived and whisked us back to the hostel for a mere $2 each.Back at the hostel I unpacked my city goods and tried to organize my gear. Steph packed up entirely and moved on to a Warrior Hiker event. She is planning to get back on the trail at Sams Gap tomorrow morning. I spent my afternoon back on the front porch socializing and journaling on my newly received tablet. I'm hoping it will make journaling and posting to trailjournals.com faster and more efficient. The downside is the extra weight and difficulty of keeping it charged in the woods. I'll give it a week to see how it goes. Previously I had been able to post pictures and mileage almost daily using my smartphone, but my journals were hand written and mailed back to Minnesota to Sprite for transcription and online posting. Because I don't frequently see mail boxes in the woods, plus actual mail time to Minnesota, the occasional lost or slow envelope, then transcription time, journals could take two weeks to post. By early evening, Wales and the Patriot were bored. They rented bicycles and rode to McDonalds. I stayed around the hostel and journaled. They have plans to slack pack tomorrow from Sams Gap back to the hostel, the same section I did yesterday. I originally had plans to get back on the trail, but wondered whether it was possible to also slack pack back to the hostel from the north. I called Tom, the guy that had given us a shuttle from Sams Gap, and asked whether he might be going north tomorrow. In fact he was and was leaving from the Holiday Inn at 7am. I asked if I could join that group for the 20 mile day and he said sure and agreed to pick me up at 6:45am. I was excited to do another slack pack day and make up some miles. I borrowed a day pack from the office and packed up. When Wales and the Patriot returned I informed them of my plans. The Patriot told me that he'd broken down and reserved a private room at the Holiday Inn for tomorrow night, lucky guy. After a long day I finally went to bed around 10pm.