Date: 2010-04-19
From: Asheville NC

To: campsite past Sam's gap
Miles today: 9.2

ahh, what a long day. Bob and Mary Ann made yet another drive up the trail to drop us back at Devil Fork Gap in the morning. We had a great stay with them and we will miss them as we hike north. They might come to Trail Days. Another wonderful day on the trail. The forest has exploded with greenness on the ground. We saw tons of trillium and squirrel corn flowers. The trees still look mostly bare, but there are splashes of color here and there on budding trees. We passed some areas just totally covered with the umbrella plants.         Typically, our hiking day is broken up into chunks about 90 minutes long, but if I am feeling weak, I'll break every hour. I have been trying to push it longer, up to my two hours I used to do. Sometimes Jasper hikes ahead of me, sometimes behind, often I start off first and he takes a longer break and then catches up with me, but we'll set a time or location to take a break, trying to plan around stopping at shelters and/or water sources as our needs dictate.         We took a break midafternoon and discussed where we might make it to for the night. I had said I didn't want to stop at the shelter for the night, I wanted to go further. But we needed to go down to the shelter to get water, so that's what I did. Sometimes the shelters are right on the trail, sometimes they are on a side trail. Hogback Ridge is on a side trail, but you can clearly see the back of the shelter from the trail. Jasper carries the water filter, so I waited for him while reading the shelter register and talking to a section hiker who was waiting for her thruhiker friend to join her that night.         I started getting nervous after 15 minutes and no Jasper. He can't be that far behind me. 90 minutes now I am stressed. Did he take a wrong turn down that jeep trail awhile back? its more likely he blew past the shelter, but its really visible. Poor section hiker Carrie, gave me some water and listened to me complain and stress. Even if he taken a wrong turn, he would have figured it out by now, he must have blown past. I left him a note in case he showed up and I hiked on. I turned my phone on in case he ran into someone with a phone. At least there is a strong signal here.         So off I hike, I make the 3 miles to Sam's Gap and the interstate crossing and keep going. I plan to find a spot to camp soon and wait for him to show up wherever he is. Finally the phone rings, its him, he blew by the shelter, mis-interpreting my saying I didn't want to stay there as my saying I didn't want to go there. He had stopped at Sam's Gap for an hour and waited, filtering water there out of a ditch. Then he hiked back south towards the shelter for half an hour (where he probably missed seeing me coming down the trail by a few minutes, as by that time I had headed out.) He then hiked back north and ran into Toothpick and Little Aspen who had a phone. At the time he called, we were only about 5 minutes away from each other. Good grief. We camped shortly thereafter, happy just to be reunited, tho we were camped within earshot of the interstate. We discussed ways to keep this from happening in the future. Weird , just last night Bob and Mary Ann were telling us a story about a time they got separated.