Date: 2018-05-25
From: Mile 620

To: Landfill Road
Miles today: 18.1

What makes a teenager moody? I¢d really like to know. Cole has had a lot of really positive days lately. He smiles when he is in a good mood and I love his smile. When I am ahead and I hear him coming up behind and I see that smile getting closer, it makes me happy. But today that moody switch was flipped and all I saw were frowns. When I told him that we were going to just get into Pearisburg, Resupply and get back out, that made him grumpier. He had assumed that we were going to stay in town.Thanks to a Guthooks user comment, I knew that once we reached the road to Pearisburg we would turn right and .8 of a mile down the road we would come to a Dairy Queen. Food Lion would be right across the road.There is a lot of time during the day to contemplate things while hiking. Today my brain was preoccupied by Dairy Queen. I grew up in a small town in Ontario. It was a touristy town in the summer and although it didn¢t have much to offer in the way of fast food, it did have a small Dairy Queen that opened up for a few months in the warm weather. There were no burgers or fries. Just ice cream. We didn¢t have much money to spare on ice cream, but a couple of times each summer we would be able to go to the Dairy Queen for a cone. I liked mine dipped in butterscotch coating. If you got the right server, she might even dip it twice. My sister preferred the wrapped dilly bars out of the display case in the front of the counter. All of the fancier frozen treats, the more expensive ones, were normally not an option for us. Except for once. I don¢t know what the occasion was, but it must have been a very rare occurrence because it sticks out clearly in my mind. My mom drove us down to the Dairy Queen and let us pick what we wanted. I got a banana split. When I get back home from Katahdin I will have to ask my mother if she remembers what the occasion was that warranted such a treat.Of course, I¢ve had many banana splits since then. When I discovered that you can even customize your banana split the way you want it, my fondness of them increased dramatically. I am not a fan of the chocolate sauce you see, but I really like the pineapple topping. I was pondering all of this as I hiked and I had my tastebuds all worked up for a banana split...one banana cut in half, three little mountains of ice cream, one topped with strawberries and two with pineapple, and whipped topping smothering it all.We were not far from the road. Cole was ahead. From the distance I saw him sitting on a perfect Little Rock perch waiting for me. As soon as he saw me coming he picked up his seat pad and began to stuff it away.¢Oh don¢t put that away yet please,¢ I said, ¢I need to rest for a bit.¢He continued stuffing it away and retorted. ¢We need to keep moving. I don¢t want to be hiking past 8pm.¢¢Well I guess that you should have picked a younger hiking partner.¢ I responded as I sat down anyway. And then I added, ¢But I know how to save us some time. We just won¢t stop at Dairy Queen.¢¢We were going to stop at Dairy Queen?¢¢Yup.¢Did I just loose the banana split I had been dreaming about all day? I think I did. After my moment of rest, we carried on together. Cole said nothing.At the road, two hikers were waiting for a shuttle. We chatted briefly and I told them that we were headed to the Food Lion.¢There is a Dairy Queen down there too,¢ they offered. ¢Great, thanks!¢We walked the .8 of a mile down the hill and past the Dairy Queen. At the food lion I purchased our Resupply items and bought Cole and I a banana to eat. A consolation prize of sorts. Then we walked right by that Dairy Queen once again headed back up the hill. The road split and we took the left fork, ignoring the sign that said Appalachian Trail pointing to the right. Shortly after, a loud clunking car with two young men in it stopped in front of us and asked us if we wanted a ride to the trail head. ¢Yes we sure would.¢¢Good. You are headed the wrong way.¢We piled in and three short minutes later we were where we were supposed to be.I said to Cole, ¢That could have been a disaster if we had kept heading up the wrong road this late in the day. It was like a miraculous intervention.¢He replied, ¢I wish we could have had Dairy Queen. I¢m sorry for my attitude mom.¢ Then he smiled. I love that smile.An apology while we were still in town may have been a last ditch effort to get DQ, but this apology was genuine. I would say that a heartfelt apology is worth giving up a banana split for.We hiked three more miles before stopping for the night. The place we set up was close, very very close, to train tracks. The trains woke us up multiple times throughout the night.