morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2013-04-30
From: Old Orchard Shelter

To: Trimpi Shelter
Miles today: 14.1
Weather: overcast clouds

Getting Back on ScheduleDay 13: This is the day we planned to get back on schedule. We were behind because of the shortened rainy day hike. If we had been on schedule, this would have been a 9 mile day, so adding the addiitional 5 miles we were behind made it a doable day, albeit long for the 10-12 miles we have been doing. We arose to a mostly clear day and a temperature of 50 degrees. What a difference a couple days make!! It had showered briefly around midnight but you could hardly tell it had rained this morning...even the tent was dry. We packed up and hit the trail at 7:40am. Unlike yesterday's rocky trail, most of today's was forest duff and reasonably graded so we could keep a good pace. The only thing that slowed us down was stopping at various high points trying to get cell service to send off the last 3 days of Journal entries. AT&T cell reception has been basically non-existent since we left the Tennessee mountains. One thing about all this rain is that there is not a problem finding water!!...every creek, stream and gully has water running in it. And as the picture shows, there are a lot of pretty waterfalls to be seen. We saw our first snake today. It was brown and 18 inches long and was laying on the trail sunning itself. We had a couple of 1000 foot climbs today...the last was in the afternoon with the temperature at 75 degrees. To think a couple of days ago we were cold and wet. We arrived at the shelter at 5pm...and one of the people already there was a hiker we met last year in Georgia...her trail name is Rangley. She is hiking the AT is non-sequential sections and just happened to be here now. She remembered ET and that she showed ET what poison ivy looks like..small world!!
Date: 2013-05-01
From: Trimpi Shelter

To: Partnership Shelter
Miles today: 10.6
Weather: clear sky

Yes, Pizza is Delivered to the ATDay 14: We awoke to an overcast sky and the threat of rain...what happened to the warm weather? We hit the trail at 7:30am with an initial descent, so we stretched the muscles and strided out. At the bottom we found some "Trail Magic"...some Trail Angels from a local church left a cooler with soft drinks and a chest with food for hikers.. Spider grabbed a cola and we each took a package of cookies...lunch was extra special today! After a climb we had some great views of a green, pastoral valley below. Unfortunately, we could also see the front of rain marching across the valley towards us...Darn. So on with the rain gear aka our personal sauna. After awhile we realized the rain had stopped advancing...so off comes the rain gear...it's called the weather game!! At a high point, Spider got cell service, so he phoned to make a reservation at the motel we planned to stay at Thursday and Friday nights (Yeah, a "zero day" coming up!). He was concerned that the changing weather might drive hikers indoors and there would be "no place at the inn" by the time we got there. We arrived at our destination shelter at 2pm. The shelter has a restriction of no tents so we are sleeping in the shelter tonight. This shelter is right next to the Mt Roger Recreation Area Headquarters. The unique feature of this location is that the Headquarters has a free phone to the town of Marion...and thus a easy call to Pizza Hut...which delivers!! We have always heard that you are no more than a half a day from getting pizza delivery..so we had to give it a try. It worked and boy did it taste good...must need the grease!! The temperature never got above 60 degrees today..I guess in Virginia just wait 24 hours if you don't like the weather!
Date: 2013-05-02
From: Partnership Shelter

To: Relax Inn, Rural Retreat, VA
Miles today: 11.6
Weather: scattered clouds

Chillin' in Rural Retreat, VADay 15: We slept well on our pizza-filled stomachs. We awoke to an overcast, cool, misty morning. We hit the trail at 7:30am and immediately began to climb. In fact we climbed into the cloud cover, soon we could only see 40 feet down the trail. To make it worse, the moisture condensed in the trees so when the wind blew, which it did a lot, the trees would shed their water so it was as if it was raining... on went the raingear. Once we had climbed about 1000 ft we began our descent to the valley far below that held the I-81 freeway..and our motel. As we descended we dropped below the clouds and the pseudo-rain stopped. We arrived at our motel at 2:30pm. We showered (boy did we need it!) and washed our clothes (boy did they need it!). Our supply box was here (wahoo!!) So we have food for the next leg of our hike!! There are a bunch of hikers we met along the way also staying here. The first milestone of note for today is that passed the 150 mile mark on this hike, we are 1/3 finished. The other milestone is that we have completed 1/4 of the AT when we combine last year's hike with what we have done so far this year. We are now busily catching up on what has happened in the world in the last week and looking forward to our zero day tomorrow. We finally got a strong AT&T service so we could check out the weather forecast for the next 7 days...it includes several days of rain...what's new!!
Date: 2013-05-03
From: Relax Inn, Rural Retreat, VA

To: Relax Inn, Rural Retreat, VA
Miles today: 0.0

A Day of RestDay 16: We started our day of rest by sleeping in until 7:30am. Then we headed to the only restaurant in walking distance, The Barn. We ate there last night and had an okay meal...except they don't serve alcohol, so ET won't get her glass of wine on this break. This area we are in is not really a town but a frontage road along the I-81 freeway. The AT comes out of the woods to the frontage road and there is the Relax Inn across the street. Next to it is a Sunoco Truck Stop and just down the road is The Barn, where the AT turns left, goes under the freeway and back into the woods. Everything else around is residential or manufacturing. So we eat at The Barn, buy batteries, newspapers, etc at the truck stop and sleep at the Relax Inn...what more can we ask for? Our physical assessment is about the same as it was on our last Zero Day a week ago, a few hot spots on Spider's feet and some soreness of hips and shoulders where the pack sits, but we are feeling much stronger. We started out having to take a break on our hikes, about every hour to rest the muscles and massage the aching feet. Making 10-12 miles took the whole day. The last couple of days we were taking breaks every 2-2.5 hours and completing 10-12 miles by early afternoon. So we are going to ramp up the distances for the next 7 days and see how it goes. Our experience with other hikers has been a little different this year than last. Last year we were starting with everyone else. Therefore we all "trail hardened" our bodies over the same trail. As such we would see lots of the same people at various times along the trail. This year we have stepped into a thru-hiking community that already is trail hardened and doing many more miles per day than our "city soft" bodies could handle. So we meet someone in a shelter or in town and then they are gone. However, we've met some interesting people on the trail. We met a couple who are hiking with their dog. But the dog is not just a pet, it is a service dog. The man is a diabetic and the dog is trained to recognize, via smell, when the the man is about to go into diabetic shock, especially at night, and alert him to it before he is incapacitated. We also met a guy who trains proffessional marathoners and triatheletes. Facinating stories about training regiments. We are all packed up and ready to head out tomorrow. The Weather Channel says the storm that is dumping snow in the midwest will hit here Monday...so here we go again!!
Date: 2013-05-04
From: Relax Inn, Rural Retreat, VA

To: Campsite near Lick Creek
Miles today: 17.1

17 Miles on Day 17!!Day 17: We have been watching the Weather Channel and logging on to weather sites on the Internet trying to figure out when to expect this next storm. The most recent projections say that the storm will hit late Sunday and last into Tuesday. Since our original hiking plan had us tenting both those nights, a change of plans was needed. Unfortunately, the shelters were not spaced right for our desired 15 mile days... so we decide to "push it" for a couple of days to get the shelters to be within our reach on the rainy days. Today called for a 17+ mile day and tomorrow a 16 mile day to a shelter, (We hope there will be space since everyone will be heading to the shelters!) So we were up at 6am to take our last shower for awhile, then headed to The Barn for one last meal. The day was overcast, windy and 45 degrees. We hit the trail at 7:45. This was a day with lots of ups and downs of 600-1000 feet. When we are near a population center the AT often crosses private land. To do so, the AT Conference has procured easements. However, since this land is often in use by the owner in the form of cattle grazing, there must be a way for the hikers to cross fences without letting the cattle out. A variety of "contraptions" are employed, but the one we saw most often today was the stile. They are steps up and over the fence, as seen in the picture. The sun actually came out in the late afternoon...Wahoo. We finally arrived at our destination, Lick Creek at 4:45pm. We found a campsite right next to the creek, so we are letting the bubbling water lull us to sleep!
Date: 2013-05-05
From: Campsite near Lick Creek

To: Jenkins Shelter
Miles today: 15.9
Weather: light rain

Let it Rain!!Day 18: We set the alarm for 5:30am because we wanted to get a jump on everyone in making it to a shelter. It's a small shelter, only holding 6 people and with rain forecast for tonight we REALLY wanted to stay in the shelter. Nothing is more uncomfortable than packing up a wet tent in the morning and having to carry it...not to mention the extra weight of the water. We hit the trail at 6:30 and almost immediately began our 2000 foot climb for the day. The day was overcast, windy and cool. As we climbed, the wind intensity picked up and the temperature dropped into the mid-40s. At the top of our climb, amazingly, there were only a few trees so we had wide views of the farms and ranches in the valley below..so I took a picture. As we started our descent, the twenty-somethings that we were trying to beat to the shelter, passed us by...all 8 of them!! There goes the chance for spots in a dry shelter We soon started to hike along a ridge. To the south we watched the storm heading our way. Soon the cloud engulfed us and we were walking in a fog where we could only see 40 feet ahead. Like several days before, the moisture condensed on the trees and made psuedo-rain when the wind blew. On went the raingear. At 2pm we started getting a misty rain and at 4pm a light rain. We arrived at the shelter at 5:15pm and lo and behold there were only two people in the shelter! The twenty-somethings were all tenting...go figure! So as I type this posting, we are snuggled in our sleeping bags in the shelter listening to the rain on the roof. It's supposed to rain all day tomorrow, so we are headed to another shelter... We hope we can be as lucky as we were today.
Date: 2013-05-06
From: Jenkins Shelter

To: Helveys Mill Shelter
Miles today: 14.0
Weather: light rain

Raining on our "Parade"Day 19: As forecasted, it rained all night and was still raining when we woke up. The twenty-somethings packed up and headed out early. Our hope was that they would go on to the shelter 23 miles away (yes, 23 miles is nothing for them!) or they might go to the town that is 2 miles off the trail today. We packed up in the dryness of shelter and headed out in our raingear. I thought it might be useful to describe what I mean when I say "raingear". The attached picture shows ET as the well-dressed hiker prepared for rain. It starts at the top with a wateroproof hat. Next a waterproof cover for the backpack. Add a waterproof jacket and waterproof pants. Lastly waterproof boots. The reality is almost all this stuff is waterproof only to a point. Today would test our gear...and some of it failed because it rained our whole hike. Sometimes the rain would ease off and the sky would brighten. We would think "here comes the sun!!" only to have the heavens open up again. We made it to our destination shelter by 3:15pm, hoping to be early enough to get a spot. When we got to the shelter we found it packed with the twenty-somethings. They had not moved on to the next shelter or gone to town..they were occupying "our" shelter. Oh well. So we set up our tent near the shelter, in the rain and crawled inside to dry out and warm up. As described earlier, we use the tent's vestibules to store all the wet gear and the tent is reserved for the dry gear, like a change of clothes and our sleeping bags. Once inside the tent, in our sleeping bags, we listened to the rain and warmed up. The rain finally started letting up about 5pm. The sun even popped out once, then it clouded over again. The forecast is for the rain to end tonight with just a chance of thundershowers tomorrow...we hope so. Hiking in the rain is no fun!!
Date: 2013-05-07
From: Helveys Mill Shelter

To: Campground on VA 606
Miles today: 16.3
Weather: scattered clouds

We Finally Found the Sun!!Day 20: It continued to rain on and off into the night...the last squall was at 2am. How do we know? When you sleep inside a tent and it starts to rain..it's like being inside a drum with someone beating on it!! We awoke to a cloudy day with fog. The morning after a day of hiking in the rain is never fun... because to preserve your dry clothes you are forced to put the wet ones from the previous day back on... Brrr! We hit the trail at 7:45am. The clouds looked threatening and we heard thunder most the day, but we were only spinkled on a couple of times...not hardly worth putting on our raingear. Towards the end of the day, the sun actually came out, Hurray!! We made it to our goal for the day, the Kimberling Creek and highway 606 by 4:50. We had been talking about how we had not crossed any major rivers this year as compared to the several we had crossed last year in Georgia and North Carolina. Well, Kimberling "Creek" qualifies as a major river, especially after the recent rains. We crossed it on a long suspension bridge as seen from the attached picture. We had planned to find a spot near the bridge to camp, but everything was too boggy or too close to the road. So we went to plan B...we walked 0.5 miles up VA 606 to a grocery store that offers camping, laundry and showers for $6 per person. They also have a little cafe, so needless to say, no freeze dried dinner for us tonight...burgers, fries and chocolate shakes...Mmm!
Date: 2013-05-08
From: Campground on VA 606

To: Woods Hole Hostel
Miles today: 14.9

Wet and Dry:Day 21: No Fair!! The forecast for today was partly cloudy, but we awoke to the patter of rain on our tent. So we put on our raingear, packed up the wet tent and headed out at 8:05am, grumbling the whole time. As we climbed out of the Kimberling Creek valley the rain intensified. Soon the trail became a stream of water and the low spots became mini-lakes 6 inches deep. To keep from flooding our boots we were forced to walk on the edge of the trail (the trail is "U" shaped in cross-section with the center being lower due to foot traffic). We walked more BESIDE the trail than ON it today because of so much water on the trail. Some of the creek crossings were challenging too, because what normally would have been a step-across creek was now a raging torrent 3-6 feet wide. We would have to search up and down the creek to find a place to cross. In the afternoon we had a 1500 foot climb that resulted in us being surrounded by fog..and rain. The rain finally stopped at 4pm. Not one of our more pleasurable day of hiking. However, what made the day pleasurable was staying at the Woods Hole Hostel. This hostel is about 0.5 miles from the AT and is a cedar log house built in the 1880's. The owners grandfather discovered it abandoned in the 1940's and it was turned into a hostel in the late 1980's. They prepare meals for hikers from their garden and livestock. So as I am typing this, we are showered, warm and well fed!! The major event for this 21st day of hiking is that we passed the half-way point of this year's hike...225 miles.
Date: 2013-05-09
From: Woods Hole Hostel

To: Plaza Motel, Pearisburg, VA
Miles today: 9.9
Weather: light rain

Let the Sun Shine inDay 22: I like the way we awoke this morning, with the sun shining in our eyes!! We had a delicious breakfast at the hostel then headed back to the AT at 9am. The nice thing was we had dried out everything at the hostel so our packs were probably a pound lighter!! After a brief climb we descended into a forest of Rhododendrum...unfortunately this brought back yesterday's nemesis, flooded trails. We were back to walking on the edges of the trail again. We finally climbed to a high point overlooking the New River valley some 2000 feet below...and took the attached picture. The bad thing was that our destination for the day was in that valley..so down we went on a steep trail that was hard on the knees!! We arrived at the Plaza Motel at 3:15pm. When we checked in we asked for our supply box that had been shipped by ET's mother, Bobbie, 3 weeks ago. But no box was there..Oh Oh!! ET called her Mom and got the tracking number so we could log on to the Post Office website to see what was up. It turned out that delivery at been attempted to the motel before the office was open, so the box was declared undeliverable and returned to the Post Office...where it languished until ET inquired about it today...another mystery of how the Post Office works. Anyway, we have our box (Thank you, Bobbie!!) and are ready for a "zero" day tomorrow. This past week of "ramped up" miles per day has our bodies begging for a rest.Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
Date: 2013-05-10
From: Plaza Motel, Pearisburg, VA

To: Plaza Motel, Pearisburg, VA
Miles today: 0.0

Out of the Woods with Woods (Tiger that is!!)Day 23: It's nice to wake up knowing you don't have to pack up and hit the trail. That's not to say we didn't have things to do...It's just that we had all day to do our "town chores". Things started by having breakfast at Hardee's (the east coast version of Carls Jr), then off to the laundromat to wash all our clothes (you can always tell a hiker in town because they are wearing their raingear even when it's not raining...because all the rest of their clothes are being washed!!) While ET monitored the wash, Spider walked the 2 miles round trip to the library to check email, our TrailJournal log (Good job, Zak), weather forecast and a few other Internet sites. It's amazing how after hiking 12-15 miles a day with a pack on makes you not even think twice about a 2 mile stroll to the library!! When Spider returned, our laundry was just finishing up. Next it was off to Rite-aid to buy a few things and then to the grocery store to buy a few snacks (the "hiker appetite" has kicked in for us...we don't seem to be able to satisfy our hunger). As we walked around we had great views of the mountain we came down yesterday, Pearis Mountain..so we took a picture of it...kind an opposite of yesterday's picture looking down from the top. The afternoon was spent repairing some of our gear, repacking the food from our supply box and resting..Of course Spider had to get his golf "fix" watching Tiger Woods play at the Players Championship on TV. Physically, we are doing okay. Spider had to replace a knee brace that had worn out and was not giving all the support it was supposed to..this showed up on yesterday's descent of the mountain. We are fairly comfortable averaging 15 miles a day now, so have revamped our hiking plan based on this mileage. Thunderstorms moved in this afternoon so we had to walk to dinner in the rain...what's new??!! We found a nice restaurant to have an early celebration of ET's 60th birthday in 2 days. Like last year, she will be celebrating her actual birthday on the trail. The forecast is for more thundershowers tomorrow so we will likely have to live in our raingear for another day..but the extended forecast shows things drying out for the remainder of the week...I hope they are right..We are tired of rain!!
Date: 2013-05-11
From: Plaza Motel, Pearisburg, VA

To: Dickenson Gap
Miles today: 15.0

Days of ThunderDay 24: We awoke to a foggy, misty morning but the temperature was in the mid-50s. We finished the last of our packing, then headed over to Hardee's for breakfast. We talked to a couple of other AT hikers we had met along the way, who were also having breakfast. We finally hit the road at 8:15am. We had a 0.8 mile walk back to the trail. Once there we descended down to the New River...not sure what they did with the "Old River", but the New River was a wide river. We took a picture as we crossed it on a highway bridge. Once on the other side, we started our big climb for the day...almost 2000 feet up and some of it pretty steep. With our packs heavy with new supplies, it took some work to haul them up the mountain. Once we reached the top we were on a ridge that we began to traverse. We noted on the map that the spine if the ridge was the Virginia/West Virginia state line, so as trail meandered from one side to the other of the ridge, we were wandering between states. The fog had vanished by the time we reached the ridge, so we had great views of the valleys on both sides. The sun even poked its head out of the clouds a couple of times, but in the afternoon the clouds began to build and soon we had some brief showers. Finally in the late afternoon we began to hear the rumble of thunder...Oh Oh!!We had planned to dry camp (camp at a spot where there is no water), so about 2 miles before our planned campsite we stopped at the last available water to stock up for the night. It was a small spring and Spider finally had a chance to use the water pump/filter he has been carrying for over 3 weeks (up to this point water has been clear and plentiful so we have been just iodizing it). As we approached our campsite the rumble of thunder got closer and closer. Looking out across the West Virginia valley to the north, we could see bands of rain headed our way. We arived at our campsite at 4:40pm and quickly set up the tent as a light rain began to fall. No sooner had we crawled into the tent with our gear, that it began to pour rain. We ended up cooking dinner in the vestibule while it continued to rain. We are sure tired of the rain. The forecast for tomorrow is partly cloudy...hope that's right!!