Date: 2014-06-09
From: Niday Shelter

To: Four Pines Shelter
Miles today: 16.8

Sometimes it's the little things on the trail that can turn things around and get you going again. We slept in the shelter and awoke to the smell of a fire which is always enticing. Honeybun's son was up early and stoked the fire and Coma came over to the picnic table with his music going. We all sat around the picnic table and ate breakfast together, it was great. It reminded me of the good old days where the family got together and ate breakfast,it was a definite morale booster.   We left camp in high spirits and that helped getting over the first mountain of the day and we ended up at the top where there was a monument for a World War II veteran and sat there for a bit. After that we separated for a bit and I was out front listening to some music in beautiful weather and running down switchbacks. I keep telling myself I'll stop doing that but it's too much fun and it's liberating to run down a mountain jumping over roots and making wide turns on the switchbacks. We all met up at a stream which was the only water source for a while,that seems to be the theme for this part of the trail.    The rest of the hike was nothing special, we were aiming for Dragons Tooth which was a rock formation that was suppose to be pretty cool. A few miles before that the trail decided to spice things up and became more of bouldering than hiking which toward the end of the day was a bit of a struggle. It was flat trail that all do sudden turned towards conglomerates of rocks that had blazes on them that we had to climb, the trail does not make it easy sometimes.   I got to Dragons Tooth first and there were some college students there which I said hi to and then went scaling up Dragons Tooth until common sense prevailed and I wussed out and stopped climbing. After we all hung out there for a bit, we went on to finish the last 2.5 miles of the day which in the guide book was all downhill so it shouldn't have been too bad. It was pretty bad, we had to scale and climb down rocks for the first mile and it took every ounce of energy to finish. When we for to the bottom we headed down the road to Four Pines Hostel which was at a guys house and he converted his three bay garage into a hostel. His house had a huge AT sign on the front lawn and we started walking up the driveway when we noticed baby alpacas on the front lawn,that's when we knew this place was going to be good.    The hostel is totally donation based and he provides cots and couches in the garage with free showers and you have the option to sleep in the barn with the alpacas. He had free fruit and other food for everyone and even had a van with a dragon painted on it that anyone could use to go to the gas station to get some food which we took advantage of. After we got back, we hung out by the fire pit where Delaware and Gadget cowboy camped and I went to the garage. While there I picked up a Hawaiian print bathing suit which I'm going wear when I'm doing laundry and don't have to sit around in my underwear,trying to class it up a bit these days. On the way there, Stardust was sitting on a bench outside and asked if we wanted to slackpack 26 miles tomorrow which threw me for a loop. This was a decision to be slept on and not made hastily so off to bed and decide whether we want to do some big miles tomorrow.