morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2017-10-15
To: Jenkins Shelter
Miles today: 11.3
Weather: clear sky

10/15Jenkins Shelter11.3 milesTo my surprise, my foot and rib felt better this morning. Cheap motel beds usually aren't helpful like that. Day two of my migraine was thudding behind my left eyebrow though. It seemed like it was going to be pretty bad, so I decided to take medicine for it. I knew that this would make my legs feel tired, but I figured tired legs would be better than a raging headache. When I checked my clothes, they had barely dried at all. I switched the cooling unit over to heat and draped clothes across the vent. My socks dried fairly quickly that way, but my pants still had a way to go when I gave up and put them on. At least by then they were warm and damp, not cold and damp. They're damp most days from sweat anyway. I checked the weather. It's supposed to rain tonight for a few hours. I need to test out my tent some time, but for today I decided to stop a little early and stay at Jenkins shelter. The tired legs probably would champion this idea if they could talk. I called Bubba at 7:45 and we were soon on our way back to the trailhead. I don't know how I missed it yesterday, but there was a Hello Kitty cover on his steering wheel. I asked about it and soon he was telling me about his wife and their pot bellied pigs. When we got there he showed me video of his wife petting one of the pigs on his belly. At the end of the song that was playing, the pig fell over, stiff legged. I said he reminded me of one of those fainting goats. Bubba said he wanted to get one of those and name it Boo. This cracked me up, starting my hike with a laugh. Mid morning I ran into an English dayhiker. He's on a work trip and took time to come out and see the trail. He was fun to talk to and he kept me company until lunchtime. After lunch he sped up so he could get as far as Jenkins Creek and have time to return to Bland before dark. I never saw him again, which worried me. I got to the shelter and shortly after Ghost Hiker walked in. She saw him a mile north of the shelter, headed back. I'm pretty sure I didn't get off the trail at any point, so he must have. He had some problems following the blazes on the way out. There are so many unmarked trails in the area that it's easy to be mislead. I hope he made it back to his car all right. Ghost Hiker made a meal and then moved on. I decided to stay but it feels odd to be here so early - it was around three when I got here. And the weather looks perfect, too. I'll be surprised if it actually does rain tonight. By the time I found a good bear branch and then made dinner, it was 4:30. I prefer to stop hiking around 5 anyway, with dark coming earlier now. So I guess I'll twiddle my thumbs until bedtime. I'm a little sad to find that the privy here has been replaced. In 2010 it was a stool on a wooden box, with no walls to protect one's dignity. The current privy still isn't very substantial, but it does have walls and a roof. The old one was so hilarious that it was worth the embarrassment.
Date: 2017-10-16
To: Lick Creek
Miles today: 16.4
Weather: overcast clouds

10/16Lick Creek16.4 milesMudflap arrived in the evening. We decided to make a fire to combat mosquitoes. I leapt into action, finding dry downed wood like a mountain woman. I built a fire of which I was very proud. I'm not sure if it got rid of the mosquitoes or if the temperature just dropped enough, but either way things were better. I slept snug as a bug in a rug. Mudflap was chilly in his bag, I found out in the morning. We both woke at six and ate breakfast still in our sleeping bags. He passed me going up the mountain after we left the shelter. I didn't see another hiker all day, which was just as well because when I got up to the ridge line and checked messages, my heart broke. JD let me know that he'd made Andrew's final appointment for today. Everything had gotten worse at once and it was time to release him from his suffering. I regretted not being there for both of them. As I walked on, waves of grief started to roll over me. I would have to stop walking while I sobbed, unable to see. I asked JD to play "I love you, but goodbye" for Andy as I couldn't be there. Andy has been getting worse for a while, suffering from cancer and side effects of chemo. It's a delicate balance, caring for an animal. You love them so you want to keep them alive, but you also want them to be well and happy. I can't regret ending his life. JD and I both wish there were some way to make him well again, but there isn't. Vale, Andrew, fluffiest of pants, patient hunter of mice, opener of drawers, destroyer of bags, cat of my heart. You were my once in a lifetime cat. I don't know what I did to deserve your devotion, but I returned it and you knew it. After his passing I sat in Chestnut Knob Shelter, wrung out. I never liked that shelter and my grief did not improve it. I sat there, freezing, listening to the wind whistle. I wasn't with Andrew at the end because of this thruhike. Well, by gum, I would hike then. I put my pack back on and charged out of there. Out in the sun I felt a little better, although I was still cold and sad. I didn't want to think anymore. I put on podcasts and some layers and I just walked. Tonight it will be cold. The campsite I found is likely to be damp but I expect I'll be all right.  Time and things to do will help me get over this loss. Seeing JD next week will help too.
Date: 2017-10-17
To: Atkins
Miles today: 18.4

10/17Atkins18.4 milesGosh it was chilly last night. I was glad I had my down booties. I dug them out of my clothes bag around midnight when my feet felt cold. In the morning I put on my down jacket and down miniskirt to wear in camp. I fetched my food bag from across the river where I hung it last night, and then I got back in my sleeping bag until I finished breakfast. I was sad when it was time to pack the sleeping bag. I got moving well before dawn. In the dim twilight my headlamp didn't seem to help much. Within fifteen minutes there was enough light to see without it. It was quite cold down in the hollows. I hiked wearing my fleece top, windbreaker, buff, and gloves. I gradually removed layers, but some I kept handy to put back on when I went down into a hollow or just downhill so I was generating less heat. I kept my double bagged water filter inside my windbreaker until mid morning. I wasn't sure what the temperature was. Probably not freezing but there was no sense in risking the integrity of the filter. Hence its kangaroo pouch location. I had intended to tent tonight but as the day went on it seemed like I could reasonably make it Atkins. Tenting would mean a three mile trip to Atkins, then a long boring day in a motel room. Or skipping the motel, as well as the shower, electronics recharge, etc. Instead I made it to town at 7, in good time to get food at the Mexican place (pretty great food), get a room, and purchase a few days of food. The food is from a gas station. After this trip I think I might swear off gas station food for a while. The motel room is hilariously bad. At $45 I don't expect much, but even so it's humorous to me how many things are wrong with it. The Relax Inn hasn't changed much over the times I've stayed here. Maintenance isn't their strong suit. Nor is cleanliness. At least the room doesn't smell like smoke. Tomorrow I'm looking forward to breakfast at The Barn, a short walk from here. Then a twelve mile walk to Partnership Shelter, from which I can order pizza if I'm so inclined. I'm tentatively scheduling myself for nineteen miles the day after. That's a very long day for me, but I need to meet a friend in the next few days and there are not so many options that work with regard to distances hiked and possible road crossings.
Date: 2017-10-20
To: Fox Gap
Miles today: 11.7

10/20Fox Gap - staying at Shannon Simpson's house11.7 milesSleep, glorious sleep. I was so cozy in my tent. At 5:30 I saw that Hangry and Tantrum's tent was glowing. I considered getting up. Then I rolled over and went back to sleep. At a little after 6:30 I woke up again and bowed to the inevitable and also my bladder. I visited the privy and then the tree with my food bag. I made coffee and then ate breakfast while watching the sky change colors. Hangry and Tantrum left while I was still sipping coffee. Shortly thereafter I packed up and got gone. The sun was just barely up over the ridge line, lighting the tops of the trees. The miles passed peacefully. Here in southern Virginia, no incline is so steep as to catch a thruhiker's attention. I go up, I go down, but never so significantly as to seriously disrupt my mellow. Nearly 1700 miles of hiking have given me a certain amount of ability to walk. Amazingly, another hiker stepped aside for me to pass him today. I certainly seemed to be faster than him. I stopped at the road to wait for my friend, and the fellow didn't arrive there for a good long while. Possibly he was 80, but I'll take my victories where I can. In 2010, I was going to visit Shannon near Damascus. But cell signal was severely lacking, and I couldn't contact her until well after I passed. This year I had a better phone and better cell service. I contacted her several days ago to arrange a time and place. Only 7 years later, I finally stayed with her during a thruhike. She met me at Fox Gap, then drove me to a grocery. After a whirlwind tour of the store (during which I noted that Shannon knew or was related to the whole town), we returned to her house where I met her family, showered, started laundry, and ate the amazingly yummy dinner that her husband cooked. Notice that showering came nearly immediately after entering the house. I liked the whole family. I'm sad that I don't live close enough to get to know the kids as they grow up. I think they're both going to be amazing. I'm trying to remember how and when I first knew Shannon, and drawing a blank. Nevertheless we stayed up hours past hiker midnight, talking. Also I need to steal their adorable dog, Cole. Sweetest dog ever. Possibly that would be a bad repayment of their hosting generosity. Son Preston relinquished his room for the night, so I get to sleep on a real bed. I would have been happy with the sofa, but perhaps Preston likes the opportunity to watch movies late? I'm grateful at any rate. Eating a real dinner (with multiple vegetables!), taking a hot shower and drying off with a real towel, sleeping in a real bed - these are all huge luxuries in my current life. My days are long on nature and peace. Not so much the modern conveniences. I am so, so appreciative and thankful that Shannon opened her home to me. It means a lot. Thank you, Shannon.
Date: 2017-10-21
To: Thomas Knob Shelter 
Miles today: 13.6
Weather: clear sky

10/21Thomas Knob Shelter13.6 milesToday was my fourth transit of the Grayson Highlands and for sure my prettiest trip. The weather was fall perfect - blue skies, about 70 degrees, a light breeze. A lot of leaves have fallen but there is still plenty of color. However much of Virginia and North Carolina seemed to be on the trail with me. Today was the most people I've ever seen on the trail, and most of them had dogs. I literally saw hundreds of people today, and stepped off the trail dozens of times for people to pass. All of the dogs and people were nice, but it felt crowded like a theme park. I saw probably a hundred people camped in the mile or two prior to Thomas Knob shelter, and people told me it was very crowded here. I kept walking because I needed water. When I got to the shelter there was plenty of room left. I guess the system worked out like it's supposed to - the shelter being mostly used by thruhikers. A shelter companion offered me Evan Williams bourbon, which turned out to be quite tasty. Another offered me a couple of marshmallows to toast over the fire we collectively started in the fire pit. I roasted one of them for her using Grampa May's patented marshmallow browning method. Thanks for the mad marshmallow roasting skills, Grampa. They've definitely come in handy over the years. As the sun was going down, other hikers clued me in to the amazing sunset going on. I climbed up on the rocks behind the shelter and beheld one of my top ten all time sunsets. It was so beautiful that my heart hurt. I watched until the sky started to darken, then clambered back down to the shelter. I dug out my headlamp only to find it nearly dead. This headlamp seems to die very suddenly. I'm still carrying the spare I got from Fresh Ground, so I got it out to find my spare batteries and replace them. I'm starting to think maybe I should just keep carrying it.
Date: 2017-10-23
To: Damascus
Miles today: 14.9
Weather: overcast clouds

10/23Damascus 14.9 milesI've been thinking about hypermobility. Usually I consider it in the context of yoga, but it affects many areas of my life, including hiking. The first analogy I thought of was my body as a car. Most people's bodies respond more like a sports car. There is very little play in the steering, and the tires don't slip. If you ask for a sharp turn to the left, you get a sharp turn to the left. Generally speaking you know that if you ask your body to do something within its athletic capabilities, you'll get a response pretty close to what you expect. My body handles more like an old van. There's a lot of play in the steering, it wallows on uneven ground, and there can be unexpected motion. If you consider my body to be a marionette, the joints were put together with rubber bands that aren't quite tight enough. If my puppeteer sets me down slowly and carefully, my legs will likely come down straight. But add a little bounce, or an uneven surface, and my joints can go in an unexpected direction. My marionette ends up with legs all akilter. Your ligaments are key to your sense of proprioception - your sense of where your body is in space. If your ligaments don't respond quite normally, you never really know exactly where all your body parts. Your hands are easier to keep track of if you can see them, and your brain will happily use that information for proprioception. But if you aren't looking at them, that doesn't help. Imprecise proprioception leads to problems interacting with the environment. Slamming into doorframes, tripping on rocks, stubbing toes, whacking your hands against shelves - all are due to errors in proprioception. This is manageable, to an extent. Carefully watching my footing helps me place my feet better. Uneven surfaces, even if I know they're there, can result in my knees, ankles, or foot joints suddenly giving way without warning. This seldom happens in both legs at once, so I try to make sure my weight is solidly supported on one leg while I'm finding out if the other leg will support me. I rely heavily on my poles to help me recover from tripping or rolling an ankle. As much as possible, I maintain three points of contact with the ground. I always wondered why my friends found rock hopping to be fun and easy, while I found it to be treacherously dangerous. It was only much, much later that I realized it was normal to jump and be sure that your joints would support you when you landed. My methods of coping with hypermobility allow me to do the things I love, but they don't allow me to do them quickly. If it's possible to pay that much attention to your steps while moving quickly over uneven ground, I've certainly never achieved it. My ponderings won't help me go faster, but I'm glad I spent the time to examine the issue. It makes me feel a bit better about my pace. I think that I might be able to adapt some of my methods for handling joint instability on the trail to other areas of my life. I'll have to give it some thought.
Date: 2017-10-24
To: Damascus 
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: broken clouds

10/24Milsap-Baker Estate B&b 0 milesMy foot, which has been hurting on and off, started hurting quite a lot while I was walking into town last night. I went to Mojo's and waited inside for JD. Well, I mean I ate a big sandwich and drank a bunch of coffee while eagerly awaiting my beloved. After he arrived he whisked me away to this B&b, which is quite fancy. While we chatted, I winced as my foot throbbed. After I peeled off my socks, I saw that it was swollen and a little discolored. We decided to get it looked at in the morning if it still felt bad. Meanwhile I experienced the joys of town food and cotton clothing. This morning, my foot started feeling a little higher on the agony scale as soon as I was conscious enough to notice it. Well, dang. It's not supposed to get worse overnight. We went down to breakfast and asked about local medical places. They directed us to a conveniently located urgent care place, and even called to ask about wait times for us. Turns out there's no wait first thing on a Tuesday morning. They checked me in, got me a doctor, x-rayed my foot, had a radiologist evaluate it, and returned me to the doc in less time than I usually wait to get into a room at my regular doctor's office. The doc went through the imaging with me. It didn't show a fracture, but they're hard to see on X-ray. MRI is fairly definitive, but they don't have one of those. He thought it very likely that I have a stress fracture. My options are to go home and wait about a month for it to heal, or keep walking. It will keep hurting and it won't really heal until I go home, but I can walk on it. He said it won't kill me, and he knew I wanted to continue my journey. I asked for advice on supportive measures such as taping. He showed me how to tape it and sent me on my way. I talked to JD about it. He suggested that I plan as if I'm still hiking, so I'll be prepared if I do. We went to Walmart to get my resupply and some sports tape. Back in the car I did a fairly haphazard job trying to imitate what the doctor showed me with tape. It doesn't look pretty, and it used most of a roll, but it does seem to help support my foot so it hurts less. We stopped by Mt Rogers outfitters in Damascus where they improvised a fix for my slightly broken hiking pole. I think I'm good to go for a while. I'll just have to wait and see on the foot. The doctor did warn that a bad step could make the bone break all the way through, and that really would be the end of my hike.  I'm giving up any hope of a twenty mile day. I think ten mile days are going to be more my speed - although they aren't always an option based on terrain and camping opportunities. I'm lightening my pack as much as I'm able, per the doctor. Wish me luck that my bones stay intact and I get to keep moving along the trail.
Date: 2017-10-26
To: Unnamed tent site
Miles today: 12.2
Weather: fog

10/26Tented south of Stream at 1743.112.2 milesIt felt bitterly cold last night. My sleeping bag is rated for 20 degrees but my body sure didn't believe it. My feet were cold all night. They didn't warm up in the morning until I'd been hiking for an hour in wool socks. My sleeping pad felt cold, although it claims to be insulated. When I woke up to water a tree during the night, I moved the thin foam pad I normally put on the floor to the top of the pad. That helped reduce the heat flowing out by a lot. At 6:30 I checked my watch and decided it was time to get up. I'm sure I slept more than it felt like. It seemed like I didn't sleep at all before I got up and moved my foam pad, but it definitely didn't feel like 5 hours either. It must have been one of those nights where I drift in and out of sleep without realizing it. Given how cold I felt, I was concerned about Todd in his 45 degree bag. He survived but said it was miserable. They made arrangements to have a relative bring a 15 degree bag to the trail for him today. It stayed chilly all morning. I took off my fleece top when it got up to 35. I never felt the urge to take my windbreaker off. I kept my buff on too. I finally removed my pole grip warmers around 2 pm. I think the high was 51, reached right around when I stopped hiking for the day. I like that there are so many camping options in the south. Most aren't listed in my guide, but if I walk for a while I'll generally find an established tentsite. I could always put my tent up on any given flat spot, but I prefer to camp somewhere clearly well used. It reduces my impact and also generally makes for a more pleasant campsite. Tomorrow should be beautiful, but the current forecast calls for hypothermia weather on Saturday. I am going to try to call Boots Off Hostel to see if they can pick me up somewhere on Friday night or Saturday morning. A day of cold wet weather sounds like a fantastic day to be indoors. As always happens when I've recently seen my husband, I find myself wondering why I'm out here freezing my parts off in my sleeping bag when I could be at home in bed with my spouse and our dogs. Our heated bed. In our nice warm house. What drives me to keep going? I am as mystified as ever. I don't know what wakes me up an hour before dawn to start my hiking day. I don't know what pushes me to get up and walk when I've only just sat down. I'm not this motivated about my daily life at home. I can't explain it. All I can do is keep walking for as long as my body lets me, and hope that seeing the plaque on Springer Mountain will satisfy whatever it is that drives me.
Date: 2017-10-27
To: Vandeventer Shelter
Miles today: 10.5
Weather: clear sky

10/27Vandeventer Shelter10.5 milesI was stunned to see daylight when I woke up. I've been waking up in the dark for ages. I was cold again last night and moved the foam pad under me around 4 or 5. I guess I slept better afterward. Hence the late awakening. I lay there for a few minutes, staring out of my tent. I was feeling pretty glum. Today was the first day I had thoughts of quitting. Not that I'm quitting, yet. But this was the first time I ever had thoughts of it. I think the combination of cold sleeping (which is awful) and foot pain are sapping my will. I have short and long term plans to deal with the cold. Short term I need a Zrest or other foam pad to supplement my air pad. Sliding downhill reminded me that I still need my thin pad under me to keep me from sliding. Long term, I'm hoping my NeoAir Xtherm is still good. JD is going to test it for me to see if it's leaking. The weather today was as beautiful as predicted, which helped my mood a lot. I didn't feel like quitting as I looked out at the leaves glowing in the sunlight. I called Boots Off Hostel and hoped to go there tonight to avoid the foul weather this weekend, but my foot said I was done when I got to Vandeventer Shelter at 4. I was willing to pay money to have somebody else get water, but when I got there a section hiker was feeling worse than me. Instead I offered to get water for him. It was .3 miles down a steep side trail. I slipped and almost fell, twice. Luckily the water was flowing well. I dipped out 4-5 liters and then staggered back up the hill with many rest breaks. The hiker offered me a ride to the outfitter if I get to the road at the same time as him. I guess my good deed paid off, not that I was looking for a reward. I'll totally take him up on it if the timing works out. Two other hikers are also here. It's nice to have all the company. I got my bear line up in the tree on the first try tonight, btw. Of course there was nobody looking. Dammit.