Date: 2014-04-27
From: watauga lake shelter

To: low gap, US 421
Miles today: 25.1
Weather: clear sky

Watauga lake is beautiful, the shelter is nice too but not really a good tenting area. Its pretty slanty and rocky with some roots mixed in but it made no matter, i was gonna sleep in my tent. I would be much better than listening to the ex submariner go on with endless stories of nonsense that could never be true. It think he may have over pressurised his cabin once too many times. We saw Hoops again but probably for the last time i suspect. At the begining of the day Hoops, another boy that i didnt get his name, captain, and i all thought that we could do a 25 miler from looking at the guide book. It would be a climb initially but then looked like it would be a tame ridge walk for a long way, much easier terrain than we had been going over. The walk started nicely, walking along the lake and over the dam. Not the prettiest of dams, just a huge pile of dirt and rocks but cool anyway. Then the climb, no big deal. Then it was a never ending big deal. I kept thinking that it cant be much further but it kept going up. Finally we got to the top and overlooked the lake. Very nice, mountains came right down to the water with a few scattered islands througout. The lake is very long, probly 5 miles just guessing. So with the 'hard' part over we were just gonna cruise for the rest of the day. Well not quite. Up and down hills that are dar from flat for another hour we got to a shelter for a quick break. Surely it would be easy from here. Another hiker said the hard part was over all the way to damascus. That was the joke for the rest of the afternoon as we went up over hills for miles. After i regained my breath from a climb i would turn to Captain and say, 'there, the hard part is over'. The other bad thing was that it was one of the hottest days we have had so between that and the hope of a flat day it really got into my head. I will admit i was bummed but determined to make it a long day. Thru the heat of the afternoon we pushed on, one point we passed the grave of uncle Nick Grandstaff. On his grave read, 'he lived alone, suffered alone, and died alone'. Kind of made me feel bad for old uncle nick. He must have liked his mountain. As we neared a road crossing with thirst on our lips we talked about how amazing a trail magic would be. Im here to tell you when i saw the sign from a local church group tacked to a tree i bout fell over with joy. It said for thru hikers to take a drink and a snack. There was a big metal box with a bolt holding the lid shut to keeps the critters out. When the lid was swung open what did we find? Empty soda cans and snack wrappers. I was gutted. So high, so low. Things looked a little better at the road. A feller with a big ol peestol strapped to his side asked if yall was threw hikers. We are trying to be, we answered. He gave us crackers and advice about the upcoming hills. Nice guy, just left of center. The hike for the day took a nice turn through a pasture over some nice rolling hills then up through open hardwoods on a nice grade to get us up the mountain. It didnt hurt that the sun was much less direct so it was cooling off. I got a little perk back in my step so we decided to gather water for dinner and breakfast at the last shelter we would come to today and tent someplace in a few more miles. Three miles later we got a great tent site with lots of nice firewood laying around. Fire going first to fend off the early blackflys then tents up then dinner by the campfire. I really like fires but we rarely start one, either too tired, too hungry or not available wood. With thoughts of a town dancing in my head i drifted off to sleep. I hope you all get a chance to live such an adventure someday. Im even jealous of myself.