morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2014-05-31
From: Bryant ridge shelter

To: marble spring
Miles today: 17.0

This morning we had to hike up for 9 miles doing 3200 feet of elevation. It was tough to say the least but we hiked them faster than expected. On top we ate lunch and enjoyed the view. There we decided to try and push further than planned, we still felt really good. On the downhill we past a woman who told us that her husband did trail magic further down but she also said that there might be none left since she already passed many more hikers than they had expected. We didn't have much hope but we got ice to put in our water and marco got some beans and I got an apple, so definitely better than nothing. Thank you, we hope you keep it up, its well appreciated! We had to hike another small hill and finally got to the camp site. There are so many hikers sleeping here tonight! Marco and me had another argument about miles. Oh well as long as this is our biggest problem I guess it's not too bad. Happy trails!
Date: 2014-06-01
From: marble spring

To: johns hollow shelter
Miles today: 9.4
Weather: scattered clouds

Wow, already 1st of June, time is running! After the argument with marco I decided now to try and stop counting the miles. I will try to take every day as it comes and to enjoy it more. Maybe we make it all the way, maybe not. We will definitely climb mount kathadin, we will see how we get there... I will count again in new Hampshire, just to know if we need to yellow blaze (take the road) or if we can hike it all the way. I know yellow blazing is cheating and I really don't want to do that but I want to be on kathadin before I go home. I can still hike the missing section when I come back to the US next time. But its still a long way to go and I should start enjoying it! Today we made it to Glasgow, VA. It's a small town but they built a shelter in the town, it has a porty pot and a hot shower for free! This is awesome! The town has also a good Italian restaurant, a laundromat and a small grocery store which sells fuel by the ounce. So the town has really just everything a hiker needs. Since we didn't plan on staying we took a shuttle out in the evening, hiked 2 more miles to a shelter with a big tent site and had a fresh sandwich from the restaurant for dinner. There are so many hikers here and many of which I have never seen before. Its strange how we meet people on the trail, some we see for a few days, others hike a lot faster and longer distances but we see them in town again because they stay there longer and other hikers we see once and never again.
Date: 2014-06-02
From: johns hollow shelter

To: pedlar lake rd
Miles today: 16.3
Weather: scattered clouds

We thought we got up early but we were almost the last leaving the tent site. We did the long uphill fast, we are really getting better at hiking uphill. Down still hurts our joints thats mainly why we had longer for the afternoon miles. Anyway we came to the road where there should have been a tent site but we couldn't find it. It drove us mad, our feet hurt so badly that we didn't want to go on. We hoped we could find an unofficial tent sites along the trail. According to the book the next tent site was 2.2 miles away. We hiked and hiked and couldn't find a spot. Then we came to the one in the book and had to find out that people aren't allowed to camp there anymore. I could have cried. Marco went on without a pack and found a small tent site by a creek. He came back to tell me, got his pack and we hiked about another quarter of a mile. Now I'm tired, good night! But before we are able to sleep we have to check each other for ticks. I already had two, we got them out, including the head!
Date: 2014-06-03
From: pedlar lake rd

To: seeley Woodworth shelter
Miles today: 17.8
Weather: few clouds

What a day... If we would have known in the morning what we know now we probably would just have stayed in the tent. We had a long uphill climb of about 3000 feet of elevation, it was steep, it was long and it felt like it never ends. After the first knob, was another knob, and who would have guessed, after this another one and so on and so forth. Once I could feel something biting my upper leg, I let my pants down on the trail, marco was shocked at first but when he saw the tick he understood. The sucker had bitten deep, when marco got it out it left a bleeding spot. Another tick we found crawling on my pants when we took a break and one was crawling down marcos arm, both were killed before they could do any harm. We were really thankful for the trail magic, the cold Pepsi and the chocolate bar made my day! And it gave us an excuse for another break We thought we had only 1 mile to go after it. According to the book there were two camp sites coming up. The first was at a small creek, the ground was wet and there were many roots, not a place we like to camp. So we hiked one more mile, there should have been a campsite but there wasn't one flat space. Which meant that we had to hike on, we had hoped for another one but nothing. We had to hike all the way to the next shelter to find a good tent site. Our feet hurt, we are tired, we fixed a quick dinner and now went to bed. Then we added a new point on our daily routine: check each other for ticks every evening! Marco had two today sucked in on his right leg.
Date: 2014-06-04
From: seeley Woodworth shelter

To: Maupin field shelter
Miles today: 20.4
Weather: broken clouds

I would have liked to sleep in this morning but we got up at 6:30am as usual. It was a nice hike for the first few miles. We came past the spy rock which is a huge boulder, about 10 meters high, we could climb up on and had a awesome view from the top over the appalachian mountains. We could see in the distance the priest (mountain) which we were hoping to get to before noon. It's really amazing to see the distances we hike. We actually made it to the priest just before 12am. Toasted toad had cell phone service and tried to make hotel reservations for Saturday night. We plan to get to Waynesboro on Friday evening. We hope we can camp at the ymca, since they provide a campsite and free showers for thru-hikers. For Saturday we would have liked a hotel room. Unfortunately there is a swim tournament this weekend and all the hotels are booked out. We will go to another town for Saturday night. Toads friend comes to visit him so he is able to drive us wherever we need to go and he will also drive us to the hotel. In the afternoon we had a 4 mile downhill, it seemed endless and my feet and knees hurt. But at the bottom was a former thru hiker waiting with trail magic, that was awesome, thank you! After another two miles uphill we decided to take a blue blazed side trail to a water fall and swimming holes, the trail later reconnecting with the AT. It was a steep but well maintained trail. We didn't really see the water fall and we couldn't go swimming in the creek. Just when we got to the creek we could hear thunder in the distance and decided to hike on as fast as possible to the shelter. It was another 1.5 mile steep uphill which we did really fast. The rain started while we were on the trail but it wasn't bad, the thunderstorm went past us in the distance. It was definitely too warm to put rain gear on and we were already completely wet from sweating so it didn't matter. The rain went on and off for the last few hours, we sleep in the tent anyways since the bugs/nats/mosquitoes got bad lately. Ticks today: marco 1, me 0
Date: 2014-06-05
From: Maupin field shelter

To: paul c. wolfe shelter
Miles today: 15.8
Weather: light rain

The thunderstorm came last night around 10pm. But it stopped raining after midnight, unfortunately it rained again at 5am, otherwise our tent would probably have been dry in the morning. We got up around 7am, knowing it would take a while until we had packed everything. A wet tent just eats up time. Since the ground was wet too, we transferred our packs and our gear to the shelter where we could pack in the dry. Then we packed the inside of the tent, which was still dry and let the outside stand so it could dr longer. We had a hot chocolate for breakfast as every morning, I just can't get going without one. We finally left camp around 9am, quite late, so no surprise we already ate lunch after 6 miles on cedar cliffs, a beautiful look out rock. To know that we still had to do 10 miles didn't make it easier to leave this nice place. In the book/profile todays trail looked really easy, I should know better by now. It was harder than expected. The rocky trail didn't let us hike fast and marco twisted his ankles 3 times, even so he watched every step. We finally arrived at the shelter at 6pm, feeling exhausted. We all look forward to the zero on Saturday, we earned it doing big miles the last few days.
Date: 2014-06-06
From: paul c. wolfe shelter

To: Waynesboro
Miles today: 5.0

We slept in this morning, till 7:30am, yes this is actually sleeping in for us here on the trail. Unbelievable I know! The boys promised me I could sleep in on Saturday unfortunately they already changed their mind by now. We had to hike easy 5 miles to the road to Waynesboro. When we got there we thought to hitchhike but right then a car came to the parking lot letting other hikers out and the driver, a hiker himself, offered us to take us to town. And that's how it went on all day. The town people are really friendly and helpful. The town has a campsite for thru hikers only run by the ymca. And hikers are allowed to use the showers at the ymca for free. Since there are people at the tent site we don't trust the people at the ymca told us we could leave our packs there and they would watch them. So we were able to go to town without our packs and without being scared of being robbed. At the visitors center they tried to help us as much as possible with the aqua blazing thing. Then a woman came in and asked us if we needed to use computers and wifi. She took us to the learning center she is running for the County, so people around here would learn how to use a computer. There we could use the computer and wifi for over an hour for free. This was a real trail angel! We had dinner at a really good restaurant, we finally found a place where the chef actually knows how to cook! Now we are back at the tent site. There are a lot of people here, many of them we have never actually seen hiking on the trail. We would like to sleep now since this is our normal bedtime (9pm) on the trail, but people are partying and I just hope they will be quiet soon!
Date: 2014-06-07
From: Waynesboro

To: Waynesboro
Miles today: 0.0

This morning we got up earlier than planned. The sun shone on our tent and it got hot already around 7am. We packed all our stuff and brought it to the ymca. Then we went to weasies for breakfast, I had the hungry girl plate: 3pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon and potatoes. It was awesome! Then we went back to the ymca, repacked, made a shopping list and went to the library for using the computer/Internet. At 12am Rick Perry, toasted toads friend, picked us up. We went to Starbucks (really missed it!), to Walmart for food, to get liquor and then went to the hotel. He has chosen a really nice but not too expensive place. I was happy to spend a night in a clean comfortable room/bed. For dinner we went to Texas, a chain restaurant with good steaks. It was great to go everywhere by car, not having to worry about where things were. Back in the hotel we watched tv, drank alcohol and did our stuff online. I so enjoyed this zero day!
Date: 2014-06-08
From: Waynesboro

To: calf mountain shelter
Miles today: 7.0
Weather: overcast clouds

I really wanted to sleep in but breakfast was only until 10 am and I needed to shower and pack. So we got up at 8am. Breakfast was really good! Rick drove us around some more and finally brought us back to the trail. Thank you Rick for everything, yes you are a trail angel! It was difficult to be back hiking. We had missed the woods but we haven't missed the hiking. After 5 miles we got to a parking lot. There we had planned to meet Skins and Bearman. This are two section hikers which we had met 3 weeks ago and hiked on and off with. They are father and grown up son, hiking 3 weeks the AT every year hoping to finish in 4 to 5 years. They have promised to do trail magic for us. They brought all we had asked for: pizza, beer, doughnuts, mountain dew! Thank you both so much, we will miss you! Bearman, I hope you come to Switzerland to visit real Bern! (He lives in New Bern)Skins, make your girlfriend happy and take a trip with her to Lucerne, I'm sure she would love it!
Date: 2014-06-09
From: calf mountain shelter

To: loft mountain campground
Miles today: 20.4

We got up early, toasted toad had the crazy idea to hike 20 miles today. I didn't take it seriously but thought it's a good distance to keep in mind. We knew there would be a campground with a small store and showers. We hiked fast in the morning and did some good miles. The afternoon was hot and we were running low on water. From where we had left there was no water for 13.5 miles, at least we had known that before and each carried 2 liters of water. After 14 miles we met a couple, she is from Spain and he is from Argentina. We started to talk to them and they offered to take our packs to the campground since they were going there too, by car. We were more than happy to be able to slack pack those 6 miles that we had left. And then finally we saw our first black bear in the wild! But he ran away and shortly after we saw our second bear. He was a big guy and totally unimpressed and definitely not scared of us. He walked parallel to the trail and made those noises to tell us he didn't like us staying and starring at him. Marco took many pictures and even made a movie, the bear wasn't more than 10 meters away from us. At the campground we are able to share a site with the couple, Anna and Pablo, who took our packs. They travel the world since 14 years by car! They wrote books and hold talks at school, bookstores and travel events. You can Google them: around the world in 10 years
Date: 2014-06-10
From: loft mountain campground

To: Lewis mountain campground
Miles today: 16.1

It took us a while to get going this morning. We went to take a shower and waited for the tent to dry. Then we had to say goodbye to our new friends. I bought their book and hope it will be as interesting as them. It is about their travels in the middle east. We had a good morning hike. Most of the other hikers were slack packing and hiking along the road. The skyline drive (the road through the Shenandoah national park) was the AT, the cars have now all the pretty views and the hikers have more hills and no views. In the afternoon marco and me decided to hike the road as well. Toasted toad preferred to hike the trail, so we split there. A few minutes later it started to rain, we were able to put the rain covers over our packs but we got soaked in no time. A really heavy downpour and we were wet from head to toe. We had already done good miles and knew there was a campground with shower somewhere ahead of us. We tried to hitchhike, already the first car would have given us a ride but couldn't go as far as we wanted. But the next car could, a nice couple from France being on vacation didn't mind that their rental car got wet (we were dripping). At the campground we first took a shower and put dry clothes on, then we washed (laundry is here less expensive than in town, weird). A man in the camp store offered us a ride back to the AT, to where we left off, tomorrow morning, which we happily accepted. Like that we can slack pack the first 8 miles and then pick up our packs at the camp store, eat lunch and hike 12 more miles to the next camping. We have informed toad of our changed plans and hope to meet him tomorrow on the trail. We will bring him a good breakfast for making up. We both feel bad about leaving him and going to the campground without him so we really hope he accepts the excuse.
Date: 2014-06-11
From: Lewis mountain campground

To: big Meadows
Miles today: 18.3

What a day... It had rained last night and our tent was still a bit wet in the morning, but not too bad. We packed, brought our packs to the camp store, bought a breakfast containing of chocolate milk and honey bun, one extra for toasted toad and got a ride from the nice guy who had offered it to us yesterday. We didn't wait long at the parking lot where he had dropped us of until a hiker came by who knew that toasted toad wasn't far behind him. We surprised toasted toad with his breakfast and he couldn't be mad at us any longer for letting him alone last night (in the rain). We did really well and got back to the campground before 3pm, by then we had done just about 11 miles and had passed the 900 mile mark! We had lunch outside the camp store. Just when we were about ready to leave ken, our driver from the morning showed up. He suggested we should put up our tents at the same tent ground again, we could slack pack the 9 miles to the next camping and he could pick us up there. He said the other campground was huge and not as nice and quiet as this one. We definitely didn't mind to slack pack the rest of the day! We put up our tent, threw our packs in and left. It was a easy hike along a beautiful trail. The trail here in the Shenandoah national park is very well maintained and the rolling hills aren't high. We hiked fast but not fast enough, the thunderstorm hit us less than a mile from the parking where we should meet ken. We tried to wait it out under a tree, I know that its not safe but I think still safer than what we did after. We had thought the storm was over and started to hike again. We were on top of a bald mountain now, hadn't to go much further when the thunderstorm hit again. I was so scared, I hiked as fast as I could to the parking lot/camp store. We were all soaked, again! Ken picked us up as promised and drove us back to the campground. I liked being in the car with the heater on. Back at the campground we found our tent staying safe, all our gear dry inside. Toasted toad didn't get as lucky. He had chosen a flat spot, where now the water was standing, the inside of his tent wet, the sleeping pad and quilt a bit too. We decided not to have dinner and just get into our sleeping bags to get warm. The storm was so hard that our inner tent got pressed against the outer tent, now we have to sleep without touching the tent so we don't get wet. Great what a night. Whenever we think the rain is over it just restarts.Have a good night in your dry bed!
Date: 2014-06-12
From: big Meadows

To: Luray
Miles today: 17.6

We got up, it was still foggy and outside everything was wet. Ken had already prepared breakfast for all of us. We packed under the roof of the camp store since this was the only place that was almost dry. There marco and me decided to head to Luray today. We wanted to dry and wash everything before going on the canoe. I would have liked to save the money for a room but there was no way I would start a canoe trip already wet.We hiked together with toasted toad to the Skyland resort. There we met Nora v., potatoes and other hikers that we hiked with before. They told us they were going to watch the opening game of the soccer world cup. I would have liked to stay and watched with them but we needed to keep going to make it to Luray. We split from toasted toad and started hiking the road. A couple from Luray picked us up and gave us a ride to the hotel. They also told us where we could go grocery shopping and where the laundromat was. Thanks to you two! We did all our errands, got rained on a couple of times. On the main street we walked past the movie theater and decided to go to the late viewing of the new x men movie. We had microwave food in our room in the hotel, so we could everything get done before the movie. We were the only people in the movie theater, it was great! We had popcorn and chocolate cookies, it felt like being on a holiday, so different to an evening on the trail. (And yes we stayed until after the credentials to get a glimpse of the next marvel movie!)
Date: 2014-06-13
From: Luray

To: tent site
Miles today: 26.0

Friday the 13th, will it be good or not? We called the canoe company in the morning, they told us they could pick us up at 10:30.We had breakfast, marco went to get fuel at the outfitter, we packed and were just ready when the guy came to pick us up. He brought us to the landing, explained the rapids and left us with the canoe. From there we had to figure it out ourselves. In the beginning we had a few misunderstandings and arguments until we had figured it out how we could work together best. The river is extremely slow flowing and if we wanted to get anywhere we had to put some effort in. We had a few 2 grade rapids which were fun. I just would have preferred to do them without our whole gear in the canoe. I'm always a bit afraid to lose it or get it wet (yes we have dry bags). After the worst rapid our canoe was to a third full of water, we had to land, get the canoe out of the water and turn to drain it. We also saw a turtle swimming in the river, they do actually live here. We did many more miles than planned, then after 24 miles we missed the campground (didn't see it anywhere) and had to paddle on. We were tired and it started to rain a bit. Then we saw people on a part of land where it said private property. We drove over and asked them if they would mind if we would camp on their land tonight. They didn't mind at all, they helped us to get the canoe out of the water and showed us where we could set the tent up. The man has maintained a part of the AT for many years, what a coincidence! They had a lot of food left which they offered us, we couldn't say no to beans and chicken. Later we roasted marshmallows over the fire, what a first day of vacation (from the trail).
Date: 2014-06-14
From: tent site

To: tent site
Miles today: 14.0
Weather: overcast clouds

We woke up at 7am and had the feeling we had slept in, we both have slept very well last night and the sun had woken us up. We packed, said goodbye to the nice family and went back on the Shenandoah river. We felt and still feel our muscle ache and the sunburn from yesterday. The water isn't as deep as yesterday and we had to find our way through shallow water many times. The sun burned hot and without a break and we just wanted to get to the canoe company (14 miles) as fast as possible. They had told us to check in with them before we go down the next 40 miles. We got there in the early afternoon, had ice cream and got told where we could camp tonight. They will explain the next miles tomorrow morning to us. The campground is upstream, great... I love paddling upstream. And the campground isn't really a campground. First there is no landing and we had quite a struggle to get the canoe out of the water and up to the ground. Then the ground is more like a mud hole than actually a campground. It's a few yards wide with the river on one side and the rail track and the road on the other. Oh well we stay only for one night and hope tomorrow will be better. We had hot dogs for dinner and will go to bed early. We hope for an early start to get some miles in tomorrow.