Date: 2016-06-30
To: Rt. 615 (Laurel Creek)
Miles today: 15.3

Overall today was good. We woke up around 6 and broke camp. We stopped at the Kangaroo Mart off of 77 in Bland, to get ice for our cooler. Then we drove to Rt 615 to where the AT crosses the road. There is a relatively large parking area and several places to set up a tent on both sides of the stream which also happens to have a beautiful waterfall. We set off just before 8 and saw a hiker checking his phone or something. He asked us if we had camped here overnight and I said, ¢No, we just parked our car.¢ After about two hours of hiking at a good pace, we took a snack break on a ¢corner¢ of a mountain. When we were almost done, a thru hiker came by and asked, ¢Are you the day hikers?¢ ¢Yeah.¢ Haha He said he wanted to thank us for breaking all the spider webs this morning. There are always webs and gossamer threads across the trail. I said, ¢You¢re welcome!¢ He hiked on. We picked up our stuff and followed suit. After a while we saw him trying to hitchhike into Bland. He kind of gave up, and hike with us for a short while. He was a nice guy, trail name: Blizzard. We had to hike quite a while on a road downhill and when we got back into the woods it was a fairly steep 500 ft climb. I took a break or two before we reached the ridge. We stopped for lunch at a sawed off log, but a scary looking bee was harassing us, so we moved to a small mound of pine needles with kind of a view. We didn¢t have bread with us, so we had summer sausage, cheese and Pringles, Cheetos and gummies. Not the finest, but it did its job. Unfortunately, I must have twisted my left knee just right and I was having the same bad pain from before. I was so frustrated because I had already been concentrating on protecting my blistered left foot and 2nd toe and pinkie toe on my right. Every single step hurt. After about 2 hours I decided to take 2 more vitamin I and finally that seemed to help. It was like a miracle. We finished our hike at 3:30 or 3:40!!The most notable thing about today were the moths. They were EVERYWHERE!! On the trail, clustering on trees around the trail, fluttering into our faces and hair, stuck in spider webs and struggling to get free. One moth was even on my arm for a while. It tickled, so I moved it to a tree. In the process, it pooped on me. It was kind of an orange color. Weird.We drove to Bland and got lettuce, Doritos and¢¦ maple bacon pop tarts!! We have high hopes for those. Then we drove to DQ and each had an ice cream treat. We set up our tent at Rt. 615 and went to the creek (Laurel Creek) and met a bunch of very nice section hikers: Iron Man, El Gato, SWW (who they called Black Blaze), Jersey Girl, and maybe one more, but I can¢t remember (sorry!). Soaking my feet felt soooo good. I also rinsed off my face. I noticed two new blisters on my left foot. What the heck?At the fire area I ¢cooked¢ dinner and met Panda from Ottowa, Canada. He was really nice. I read out loud a little bit, too ¢ from the second book in the ¢My Father¢s Dragon¢ series. I really like those books. Before reading, I gave Panda a summary of what had happened so far. He either appreciated it or thought I was crazy. Now we are back in our tent, me writing this novel and Count reading some crazy book. He keeps reading me ridiculous passages.Tomorrow I guess we¢re going for a 19.2. I¢m nervous about my knees and toes. There is a 1500 ft. downhill that looks steeper than the awful downhill we did in the downpour. At least the trail won¢t be a raging river this time! It is getting darker now. It is 8:08 ¢ we are in a valley, so the sun has set for us.