Date: 2009-05-25
From: US 58 - Summit Cut

To: Whitetop Mountain Road
Miles today: 4.4

Strider, Scavenger, and I headed to Dairy King, a cheap-o diner at the edge of the town of Damascus, for breakfast. I had two eggs, sausage, and toast ¢ all for the small price of $2.95. Surprisingly, it was very good. We were still exhausted at 9 am, so we slept on the couches at The Place hostel until 11:30 am, when a man that I had seen over Trail Days strolled through the hostel. After talking for a short while, I discovered that he was Baltimore Jack, or Jack Tarlin, a frequent contributor on the White Blaze website and legend on the AT. He was much more humble than Warren Wilson. He was very humorous and very helpful with all of our questions about blisters, shoes, health, snakes, and overall logistics. Over the past few hours, I¢ve been out here on the porch attempting to catch myself up in my journal entries, which I am slowly but methodically doing. We¢ll be setting off to hitchhike back to US 58 Summit Cut in a little bit, and I¢ll write a bit more in the evening. Later on in the evening: After packing up all of my belongings, I headed out to meet Scavenger at the Subway. We were a bit lethargic for most of the day and at present and, as the torrential downpours had just begun, we dreaded heading out into the rain to get wet. So, we downed a footlong sub, called a few people, and ran a few errands, all before Strider showed up with his entourage, as he was attempting the 6 lb. angus beef cheeseburger challenge at Fattie¢s Diner. He had been talking about it for days and we were all looking forward to it. Seriously folks, 6 lbs. of beef is a lot of beef! As the exit point of town (our hitching point) was relatively close to Fattie¢s Diner, we intermittently went in to check on Strider and to make sure that he was alive. He had quite the following at the diner! In the end, he made a valiant effort, but fell one pound shy of his goal. No one has actually been able to complete the 6 lb. challenge and only one other person has been able to eat 5 lbs. Way to go, Strider!We were fortunate enough to catch a hitch from a couple that lived in Charlotte. They were just returning from watching the Indy 500 in Indianapolis. Just before we were picked up, Scavenger and I actually ran into Fattie¢s to eat the rest of the one pound of beef that was sitting on Strider¢s plate. Scavengers we both are. It probably wasn¢t the best thing to eat, especially considering the fact that we would be taking a ride on windy roads through the Appalachian Mountains. To top it off, the driver drove as if he was part of the Indy 500, so Scavenger became quite ill on the way up. The bad thing was that we had only about 30 minutes of light left and had 4.4 miles to go. As darkness descended, walking in the pitch dark proved to be quite difficult. I even gave my headlamp to Scavenger as he had trouble seeing in the dark, while I used my naked eye to find the white rocks as stepping stones and focal points. We climbed to 5,000 feet, but visibility was so bad, as we were in the middle of the cloud cover, that we could barely see three feet in front of us. At one point, Scavenger thought that the trail went over a huge 20 X 40 boulder, but the white blaze was only on the rock to let Southbounders have an idea of where the trail would eventually lead. We finally made it up to Whitetop Mountain Road at 10:00 pm and we just couldn¢t find the campsite that was listed in our guidebooks. Because we were nearly blind due to darkness, we decided to set up camp in some high grassy area, which turned out to be only a few feet from the road.