Date: 2012-04-07
From: Spivey Gap

To: Erwin TN
Miles today: 10.4
Weather: clear sky

How lucky am I? The boyscouts invited us to breakfast of eggs and bacon. Thanks so much Troop 13 for the good times and the great food. the day was beautiful, clear skys, warm weather and the first hill followed a roaring creek with falls springing up everywhere. I was so happy i saved this section for the morning when I could truely appreciate it. Today we are heading into Erwin TN. The only thing I know about this town is what past thru hikers have told me. apparently they are famos for burning books and being proud of it and being the only town in America to find an elephant guil;ty of manslaughter and sentance it to death by hanging. They never mention how that turned out.I kept my pace to bookworms who's slower these days as she's nursing a hurt ankle (something I can relate to) and we wound our way down the mountains into town. we knew we wouldn't get in in time to pick up her maildrop at the post office which closes at noon and given it is saturday she couldn't get her box until monday which would make for a lot of zeros. so I had my cell out and was searching for signal all day. Erwin is big enough to have some of the hotel chains that I earn points for staying with so when we were able I asked my dad to book us two night's in town. finally we reached this one spot around a bend in the mountain where if you leaned out off the trail a little you could get signal. it was sort of the equivlent of the guy rolling foil to get satalite and hanging off the roof just so. We called every hiker we knew who might be in town and managed to arrange someone to pick up her mail for us. what a relief. It seemed to take us forever getting into town with switchback after switchback reminding us that what goes up slowly tends to come down slowly too on the trail. so much for the laws of physics. As I rounded a bend I just happend to spot a baby copperhead hanging out just to the side of the trail where a hiker could easily step on it. For both it's sake and ours I took my pole and moved it off the side of the trail down a hill some. Poor thing was so cold he didn't even start moving until he was halfway through the move. But there's my good deed for the day I guess. Finally the trail unloaded us onto the pavement right at the doorstep of uncle Johnny's where we ran into Huff and Puff! YAY old friends. Just missed Motown and Cheese who headed out earlier that day. We had made reservations and were looking forward to me time, our own bathroon and queen sized beds to ourselves but this was one of the times I wish I was staying with everyone else at the hostel. Steve had all these boxes of beer and was planning a beer easter egg hunt for tomorrow which sounded amazingly fun. we socialized for a bit then headed down the road for the 4 mile hike into town. So no love in Erwin for getting a hitch and after a mile and a half we had a very scary episdoe where, both distracted by the antics of a very doglike in behavior horse, bookworm didn't see a huge upheval in the road and rolled her ankle badly. it was the already hurting one too and so there we are on the side of the road, me pulling her pack out of the actual road, unabale to do anything for her. She couldn't stand and we were so afraid it was broken. Hikers tend to joke that it's not the trail that'll do us in but in town when we'll get a hike ending injury. This was no joke. I felt so helpless. Fortunatly a really nice group in a van had seen the fall and pulled over and the the man with the horse came over to look at the ankle for us and make sure it wasn't broken. Thank you Thank you to this group for responding to our need and driving us the rest of the way to the hotel. Luckily we got her into bed immediatly and iced it as soon as we can. Already the swelling is bad and we're anxiously watching it to see if it'll get better or worse. I got all our laundry together and hiked into town to get food supplies, zero day provisions and take care of what town chores I could for her. People can say what they want about Erwin but I like it. I met such nice people at the laundrymat and enjoyed chatting with them while waiting for all the gear to become less of a hazordous waste product. I decided that since we were zeroing tomorrow I'd go ahead and wash and dry my sleeping bag too. We decided to order pizza to the room rather than wander into town a good mile or two in search of food. Thgen perceded to watch HBO as our only good channel of the 6 options available. Watched the terrible movie Too Fast to Furious 5 or something or other. I can't believe they are still making these. Then the totally awesome second season of game of thrones! SO nice to be in our own room, the bed are comfortable, the shower nice, and there is every comfort we could want. When we checked in the guy at the desk was REALLY unhappy with hikers as appaerntly the last group of guys who came through left the place trashed and really smelly. Nothing I can do about the smell as that's kinda just what happens in the woods, but we're making an effort to clean up after ourselves where we can. but yeah this room is getting a little ripe...Funny qoute of the day curtisy of Bookworm: "I think I know why shelters don't have four walls. If they did we would all assphixiate on our own smell" WahahaAlso the easter candy is on sale!