Date: 2012-05-22
From: Jenkins Shelter

To: Big Walker Motel, Bland
Miles today: 11.8

The entire shelter got up early today.  The first wave was out before I even woke up.  Anna got to see some speed packing today as Johnny Rocket had spent the night.  He gets up, thinks about what he is about to do, and friggen goes to town.  He was out in less than seven minutes today.  Kneif, Anna, and I were impressed but not motivated to change up our personal styles.  It had rained all night with a brilliant display of thunder and lightning that made me wish I was a little farther away from the sidewall of the shelter.  Everybody in tents outside were slow to rise.  But it was dry at 6:30am and we were on the trail a little after 7:00am.  I stayed and talked to Blue Skies while the girls and Baxter went on ahead.  We made great time, crossed Laurel Creek on a high bridge with beautiful exposed bedrock cascades.  The morning had started off overcast with low-lying mist penetrating the forest down to the needle-covered floor but as we warmed up, so did the day.  We had a couple of big ups and a big down into town.  We ate a quick snack up high at one of the wider switchback corners and tried to get Baxter to behave.  He barked at almost everyone.  The only exception was Blue Skies.  He has a gentle, warm, genuine energy and I think Baxter feels that somehow.  We walked with Hildy for a bit and played trail tag with her throughout the rest of the day.  She has plans to get margaritas with a friend later but she was going to be a little early and wondered about how to pass the time.  She passed us at the end and we watched her walk on up the trail past the road into town.  She knows her stuff so we were perplexed by this.  I triple-checked the info and used my last 3% of battery life to check availability and pet-friendliness at the Big Walker Motel in Bland.  We were in luck.  I walked to the road, figured out which direction we needed to go and put my thumb out.  Anna and PMo joined me and Baxter hid in their shade.  It was a scorcher down here and the asphalt was doing a fantastic job of keeping us warm.  It took about twenty minutes and just as many cars but we hitched into town with Bettie Carter and her husband headed for Ohio on vacation.  He pulled over first and had three dogs in the back of his truck.  We talked to him and he said his wife could take us into town.  She pulled up in a mini van and he took off.  We thought that we were going to miss out on the ride but she pulled over and opened up the door to her van that had a gas-powered pressure washer in the back.  They must pick-up hikers all the time because they knew what we were looking for.  We arrived at the single-story Big Walker Motel a bit after 2pm, checked in, showered, and just as we were about to walk down the hill to the gas station for some Dairy Queen, the sky opened up with force and it rained down hard.  We figured out the alternative to Dairy Queen in the next town was Pizza Plus and they delivered.  We tried to put an order together but their menu was quite extensive.  It stopped raining and we walked down the big hill to the gas station for some DQ.  I spent $17.50 just on my food.  I spent another $12 on PMo's and I watched Anna rack up a big bill too.  PMo stayed outside due to dog issues but managed to snag us a ride back up to the motel.  We ate and then we napped.  Hard.  I went walking at some point, writing down journal notes and met this guy named Tim*.  We talked for a bit and he invited me up to his room, the honeymoon suite,  for a beer.  I told him a little about our loose plans to hit the trail early and he offered us all a ride back to the trailhead.  Something just wasn't right about how he was going about things but he wanted to help us and offered me a smorgasboard of food too.  I started turning down his offers and was feeling a bit uncomfortable when he got a phone call from his girlfriend.  My stomach was in knots after the chaos inflicted by DQ and I excused myself, potentially forever.  I went back to our room and told the girls about what had just happened.  I used the restroom and before I had even finished washing my hands, the guy was outside our motel room.  Baxter didn't really like him.  Pretty soon, he was in our room giving Baxter a crazy ear rub and making us all fairly uncomfortable.  It was one nice thing after another: laundry, coffee, booze, massages.  We dodged these as politely as we could.  It was getting weird.  He brought up the ride again and then said he would bring his truck down for us.  He backed it right up to our window.  It was a nice truck but he was blasting 70's rock music well after 10pm.  I had to put a stop to this.  I told him we were all really tired and not looking to party tonight.  The ride was a nice offer but we wanted to keep our bags in the room while our things dried out. No more music, no drinking, no laundry, no nothing.  He wanted to make sure we were going to be up on time and that we weren't going to"ditch" him.  I assured him that all was well and that we would see him in a few hours.  We closed the shades and shut the door.  The three of us discussed our feeling about his level of crazy and walked down the hill to do a gas station resupply for one day and were reminded that we would not get to have a Subway breakfast due to the ride timing.  We walked back up the hill, slept, and wondered just what the hell we had gotten ourselves into. *Names and places may have been changed.