Date: 2005-03-11
To: It's All Over But The Shouting!
Miles today: 0.0

Dear Friends and Family,Well...., here we are, we've come full circle, back to the hollar' in North Carolina. Actually, the hollar' is the furtherest thing from the truth; we are staying up, way up, on Spanish Oak Mountain in Newland, North Carolina, directly across from Grandfather Mountain.Our move was completed without any problems as we deposited all of our worldy possessions in a storage facility in Tennessee. From there we went to Philadelphia and arrived in time to watch the Eagles loose the Super Bowl. After that we just vacationed for the rest of February through the first week of this month. We ate cheese steaks at Jeno's in South Philly, visited the Italian Market and the Reading Terminal Market, shopped at REI and Eastern Mountain Sports for more gear, toured the train museum at Stroudsburg, celebrated Fancyfree's birthday, visited Gettsysburg, Amish Country, relatives in Baltimore, toured the new Native American Museum near the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., went to Chucky Cheese's two times with the grandkids, (Footloose won 184 tickets on one spin of the wheel on one of the games and is a whiz at Skee Ball), saw the newborn grandson, Joseph, for the first time, went to an absolute amazing Cabellas Outfitter and enjoyed time with all of the family. We also managed to take three hikes on the Trail, to include an overnight hike. We experienced the rocky trail of Pennsylvania, hiked a mountain in a foot of snow, slept overnight in 19 degree weather and hiked in a snow storm. And, through all of that we were not able to escape some medical issues and sickness. Fancyfree has been to the doctor three times and the hospital once and is currently recovering from a severe cold/flu episode. She has had some trouble with a urinary tract infection and fell on the ice the first morning of our arrival in North Carolina and badly sprained her arm. I have had two bouts with the flu and am just getting over a very bad cold that's been lingering on for about two weeks. Since our return to the area at the beginning of the week we have been down to the Trail in Erwin and went to Miss Janet's Hostel. We have been dodging the snow and ice, coming up and down the mountain, to finish up our last bit of business before we depart...tomorrow night! We had to move our start date up two days due to transportation arrangements. As I write this entry, the mail drops are all packed, Fancyfree is packing her backpack and the wind is howling and blowing and it's snowing so hard you can barely see the end of the porch. We just read in the paper yesterday about the four hikers who had to be rescued off the Trail in the Smoky Mountains due to hypothermia. But we have learned some things from our hikes on the Trail in Pennsylvania. We have repacked our mail drops to make them lighter, we are going to buy more food on the Trail and are going to hike much shorter miles for the first two to three weeks. Additionally, we have added more stays in hostels and motels, during this start off period, than we had originally planned. The months and days have trickled away and now we're literally down to hours, provided that we don't get snowed in, till we start. We're a little apprehensive but extremely confident in our preparation and planning. Those of you that have offered prayers, we sure welcome them. So, we'll turn the Journal over to the skilled hands of the illustrious journal entry person, Malia, and we'll try and have an update for her every week. See you on the Trail.Footloose