Date: 2008-03-22
From: Dick's Creek Gap

To: Plumorchard Shelter
Miles today: 4.2
Weather: clear sky

So last night we tented out in the grounds of Cloud 9 Hostel. It was a clear and very cold night. This morning we woke up with a puddle of dew on top of our tent that had been dripping down on us, getting our down sleeping bags all wet--a very bad thing. We realized that one of our tent stakes had pulled out during the night, allowing the water to pool on the top. We also realized that our tent, which has no rain fly because it supposedly doesn't need one, does very poorly with condensation. Crutch, who works at the hostel, told us that our tent is not very good for the AT because of its single-walled construction. We've been carrying a Tarptent, made by Henry Shires. Apparently they do really well out West, where it's very dry, but anytime there's a lot of humidity, our tent will leak. He said that all the hikers who carry tarptents complain about the condensation, and that if it rains really hard, it will basically be misting in our tent. In other words, he basically told us we had a crummy tent and were bound to wake up with wet sleeping bags as long as we continued using it.So we realized we needed a new tent, and decided on the Big Agnes Seedhouse 2, which several people we know have, and everybody raves about. We called ahead to the outfitter in Franklin, NC, where we should be in 3-4 days, and they sold us one over the phone. They're now holding it for us until we get there. And lucky for us, because we ordered over the phone (and from out of state), we didn't have to pay any sales tax!Not only was this whole tent thing annoying because of the money we had to spend on a new one, but it also interfered with our plans for the next 4 days. We were supposed to be hiking 9ish miles today and camping out at Bly Gap tonight, in our tent, but we didn't want to risk having wet sleeping bags again. (You have to wait for down bags to dry by hanging them in the sun before you can pack them away, otherwise the insulation gets wet and they get cold spots in them.) So we had to change our days around, re-arranging our mileage so we can be sure to sleep at a shelter each night until we can get our new tent. That's why we only ended up hiking 4 miles today...because the next closest shelter was too far away.For dinner tonight I tried cooking a Kraft spaghetti meal that came in a box and had little packets of sauce mix and parmesan cheese. Apparently my pot was too small to cook it all, and it ended up being this pile of starchy, gooey, gelatinous mess. I couldn't get it to cook right, and I tried cooking it longer to make it more normal, but it was basically a huge disaster in my pot. I couldn't eat more than a few bites of it, which meant I was going to have to carry it out in my pack, because we have to pack out all of our garbage.And then this guy named Grasshopper, who is also staying here tonight, suggested that we start a fire in the fire ring and burn it. So Grasshopper, Eric, and I gathered wood, and the guys built a pretty good fire. By the time it was big enough and hot enough for me to add my spaghetti, the food had hardened in my pot and become so sticky that we had to scrape it off my fork with a stick. DISGUSTING! It ended up burning all right, once I was able to fling it all in there, and now the only sign of it is a lingering smell of burnt food...lovely!Now it's about 8:45 and Eric's already asleep next to me. Lucky. I told him I was jealous that he got to just go to bed every night, while I had to stay up and write. But I think it's worth it to be documenting our journey. I'm so happy to have other people sharing in our adventure with us, too. Thanks for reading our journal, and thanks to those who have signed our guest book!In about another week I'm going to start listing my journal under my trail name, instead of my real name. So if you access it through the TrailJournals website, you'll have to look for AquaMaria instead of Kristin M. But if you get to our journal through Eric's webpage that has our google map on it, then everything should be the same...the link should still work.Eric still doesn't have a trail name, but we're working on it. We've had a few suggestions so far, but nothing that we really liked. We'll keep you updated as soon as anything changes.Now there are flies buzzing around in my eyes because my headlamp is on, shining down at my pocketmail screen. It is officially time for sleep. And for no more flies. Goodnight!