Date: 2003-05-13
From: Hog Gap

To: Priest Shelter
Miles today: 14.6
Weather: few clouds

it was a good day. it was still impressively windy in the morning but nothing that felt dangerous. as i was taking down my tent (slowly, because of the wind), i thought i was being smart by leaving one tent stake in the ground until i was ready to pack it away. unfortuneatly, i forgot the ground cloth under the tent...which immediately sprouted wings and flew away. luckily, it went straight into a tree nearby. string bean, who was camping nearby, was up and saw me running after it. he's a human in monkey form and didn't hesitate at all before climbing the tree to retrieve it. string bean is HARD CORE and i have my ground cloth back, thanks sb!it was tough hiking along the ridge in the morning. the wind was so strong, blowing from the left that i had to compensate by leaning to the left. then the wind would suddenly stop for a second and i'm falling over to my left. i'm sure it would be funny to watch, but it was a draining walk.we (lucky, stringbean and his 2 friends, and i) were all going to meet at a road crossing about 10 miles away from our campsite. from there, a married couple picks up hikers and feeds them lunch for free everyday--kinda like scheduled trail magic. and that's what we did: they fed us hamburgers, mac and cheese, veggies, and CARROT CAKE. sooooo good. i also found out that my mom and sister, joanna, are going to be at trail days on saturday so I'll be able ti meet up with them!anywaya, they dropped us off at the trail around 2pm and we had to staggered up a ridge with our full bellies. we got to spy rock which is a side trail to a huge bare rock that we could climb up. it was so windy up there that we stayed long enough to take some pictures and started to head back down when who should be coming up to the rock but KITTY! i wasn't expecting for her and orb to catch up until wednesday or thursday. what a great surprise, but only the first of several... she and orb hiked ~24 miles yesterday in order to catch us today and they were glad to see us. the 2nd surprise was that orb was carrying lucky's hat (he'd forgotten it at renegade's trail magic the other day). the 3rd surprise was the best of all. let me set the mood: hikers eat a lot, but it's all the same thing day after day: candy bars, pasta, poptarts, oatmeal, etc. this stuff gets boring fast. but all of this is high calorie, low weight so it's effecient and practical. friends back home also know that i was counting every ounce of my gear before i left and didn't want to carry anything heavy. god forbid i carry any heavy luxury item. keep this in mind. okay, so orb and kitty were in a town on sunday (2 days ago). and since then, orb has been carrying a fresh PINEAPPLE! i mean, this thing weighed at least 6 pounds and it's been 2 days! and that's why they were trying to catch up with us: so they could eat it with us. wow! orb is the coolest. i got some pictures of him, with his pack on, with the head of the pineapple sticking out of the top--just not something you see a hiker carry everyday. orb, Pineapple King.so...after that we hiked ~4 more miles to Priest shelter where we would camp for the night and where the feasting would begin. that pineapple tasted soooooooo good. luckily, orb's knife was big enough to cut into it. it's hard enough to carry oranges or apples out on the trail, but i doubt i'll ever taste fresh pineapple on the AT again.snail and sally were also staying at the shelter. snail has been carrying an empty honeybear plastic jar (his name is half baked for some reason) and he decided to make a hat out of the top of the pinepple for the honeybear. i wish i could describe what this looks like but i just can't do it justice. we'll have to see how the pictures turn out.all in all, a lovely day (still windy though) with several surprises and trail magic to boot. i hiked a pleasant 14.6 miles total