Date: 2005-04-30
From: Hostel, Greasy Creek Gap Friendly

To: Tent, Moreland Gap Shelter
Miles today: 17.7
Weather: moderate rain

Today was a pretty great hiking day. We started with a yellow blaze to US19E. We ended night hiking in the fog and drizzle. Lots of cool stuff came in between. Reading the guidebooks about US19E is a bit frightening. They say that the section is not hiker friendly and that you might get yelled at. Cars parked there might get vandalized and the 2 nearest streams are contaminated. Sounds pleasant huh? The streams are probably contaminated from the fact they also double as the local dump. I really hate it when people dump illegally. It was also a bit creepy when we crossed the road by a cemetery and a church and some dogs started barking to beat all. You could hear them bark for a long time. I started the day off by getting lost, AGAIN. We were hiking in this large grassy meadow. It was on an incline, so I was huffing and puffing my way up. There were these freestanding fence posts with the white AT blazes on them. I followed the blazes and tried not to fall in the mud. Next thing I knew, I was at the top of this meadow on an old road. To my left was a farm and to my right there were NO white blazes. I started down the road and could see NO hiker footprints. So back down the hilly meadow I went. When I got to the last fence post blaze that I had seen, this time I noticed the arrow pointing right. So I followed the trail up some evilish little incline. Midway up this incline, I heard Troll frantically yelling for me. He thought something had happened to me because he had been waiting 30 minutes. The best part of this is - Where did the trail take me? Right back to the same road I had been on earlier. We stopped to get water at the trail to Jones Falls. We had never heard of them and were a little skeptical about spending the extra walking time to see them. That is when having a 10 yr old with unlimited energy comes in handy. He can scout things out for you. Oblivious came back down the trail saying that they were awesome. Well my son was right. We wound up spending about an hour there. Troll found a path almost to the top of the falls. We all went up and Domino took our picture. Troll said as we were coming back to the trail, "Stuff like that is the reason that we hike". He may be a Troll but when he's right, he's right. What was even cooler was that we got to see another waterfall later in the day. It was smaller and not quite as spectacular, but we played in it a bit to cool down. It was so muddy today. I am so slow in the mud. I felt like I was trying to ski in the mud. I had poles and my feet kept on sliding. Troll and Oblivious tried to show me their mud techniques. Not really that helpful. I don't know how many roads we crossed today. But they all had something in common. They were all on a blind curve at the top of a hill. I guess that would make them like every other AT road crossing. Look, Listen, Run like hell, is the way that we cross roads. It certainly adds a little extra bit of excitement. We felt really good hiking today and just kept hiking later than normal. It started to drizzle and we kept hiking. We didn't find a spot that we really wanted to camp at, so we kept hiking. Next thing we knew it was dusk and foggy and we kept hiking. It was really pretty cool in the fog and drizzle. Until we got to some slippery rocks. Coming down those in the dark wasn't quite as cool. But then there was the shelter. It was a good day. I don't know if you read the guest book entries, but they are getting kind of amusing. Teri, our Trail Angel back home left an entry in Silent Bob's journal asking him to hit Troll up side the head for her. We got an entry in our journal from Silent Bob's brother asking us to kick Silent Bob in the rear end. It's all kind of funny. Take care and we will see you on the trail.