Date: 2008-05-18
To: Trail Days!
Miles today: 0.0

New photos on http://flickr.com/photos/rasudduthNew videos on http://www.youtube.com/rasudduthOn my way out East to Trail Days I stopped by Milwaukee to visit Hedgehog for the weekend. Had a great visit, and was pleasantly surprised by the city. Went hiking a bit on the Ice Age Trail (a yellow blazed long trail in Wisconsin), car camped on Lake Michigan with mostly thruhiking gear, and even tailgated at a Brewer's game. When Hedgehog picked me up at the airport I nearly walked right past him, the beard was gone!I then flew from there to Washington DC where Tengu was kind enough to pick me up in rush hour traffic and play host. The next day we drove out the Blackburn center where TNadine and ET are the caretakers this year. We threw on our packs and headed South on the AT to the Bears Den, a hostel that was on both of our favorites list from our '07 thruhike. As the Bears Den has almost all the amenities, we filled our packs instead with trail magic to hand out to thruhikers (apples, bananas, and little debbies). We were just starting to think that we would not run into ANYONE, but then we ran into "Thud," and NOBO thru hiking with his dog. We plied him with our food, but then forget to ask him for his trash for us to pack out. That is one of the coolest things that people can do is take a thruhikers trash off of them, as it still might be several days before they get to town and will have to carry that dead weight all that way.Anywhoo, we spent the night at Bear's Den in the hiker bunks (we stayed all 3 nights upstairs when we hiked through there), and shared the hiker special of a pizza and pint of Ben and Jerry's amongst the 2 of us. There were several section hikers and 2 NOBO thrus staying the night to whom we offloaded a bunch more of the trail magic to lighten our packs for the return trip.The next day we hiked back to the Blackburn center and were done by noon. Tengu headed back to the city and after getting bored of hanging out for a few hours, I headed back to the trail to hike to the nearest shelter (David Lesser shelter) about 3 miles North on the AT. Had a great hike, offloaded the rest of the trail magic to the 2 NOBOs we had seen the night before at Bears Den, and read the register. It was the same register that was there when we hiked through so it was a lot of fun reading it, especially the entries for those who hiked through after us.The next day (Thursday) we set out for the 5ish hour drive to Damascus, a trip that took us a month to hike.Trail Days was an experience. We definitely ate like thruhikers but without actually having a thruhiker appetite. Interesting being there as a FORMER thruhiker. Even though you had completed the entire trail you were no longer a rockstar. I remember joking with Kentucky Blue about it. Very weird feeling.Ran into a ton of folks, although I had thought it would be easier to find people. I felt like I knew almost no-one, something I did not anticipate.Ended up camping right next to 2 SOBOs last year, Keisha and Tyler, who we never met as they were always behind us on the trail. Ended up spending just about the entire weekend with them, and as our good deed we adopted Robert (no trail name yet) a 2008 NOBO. Silly NOBO! Had a great time though, I have now experienced Traildays.