Date: 2012-06-11
From: Dutch Haus

To: Reed's Gap = Devil's Backbone
Miles today: 10.7

I woke up at 7am for breakfast.  I ate with Crazy Top, Kentucky, Yeti, and PMo.  There was an enormous amount of laughter, the kind where everybody seems to need to laugh over everyone else.  Only Crazy Top and I finished our food. Lois was joking about being annoyed but probably wasn't joking. I heard her discussing the shopping list with Earl and it is not cheap to give out free food to all of the thru-hikers. It was a day of goodbyes as Yeti and Kentucky were going to slack the next twenty miles back to the Dutch Haus, while Jada (Yeti's dog) took a zero.  Crazy Top was hiking forward and PMo and I were going to Reed's Gap to start where we started yesterday.  The weather was warm and humid and the sky held big, dark clouds. As we drove to the trailhead, it started raining.  We were sitting in back of truck and it was certainly time to stop playing ukulele as the rain picked up.  We dropped off Crazy Top and he had a lot of bad weather in front of him walking up that gravel road.  PMo and I hopped in cab.  I inquired about how Lois and her husband came to own such a B&B. She told me a story about their big-city corporate life in Plano and their magical 60-day journey into the unknown.  She told me that she likes hikers a lot and just shuts down the B&B portion of her home while we come through every year.  She dropped us off in the rain at Crabtree Falls Campground. Another goodbye. More future ahead of us. We started hiking and I needed my rain skirt after a mile.  It was too hot even with it hitched up.  We bounded up the ~3000 feet of rocky up with a bunch of humps.  No views whatsoever from these great granite lookouts. I felt lucky to have had such great weather at almost all of my high points.  PMo and I stopped to hang out in the first shelter, Harper's Creek to wait out the rain. It was dark and gloomy, wet and smelly but it was packed with a rambunctious group including Semplesee, King of the Hill, Hot Wheels, Jiffy Pop.. we were going to have a good time. I passed on the location of the brewery and PMo and I rolled out when the rain let up some. A mile up this steep, slick trail, I realized that I had forgotten my shirt hanging up in the rafters in the shelter. I ran back. I spoke with two trail hotties out for day hikes on the way and decided having to go back for my shirt was not such a bad thing after all. I made it to the top.  No views and no sign of anybody else either.  I rolled down to next shelter to check the register. Maupin Field Shelter held a complete lack of clues. I did see another new way of securing your food: the bear post complete with hanging sticks.  I saw Semplesee, toured the very organized camping area, signed register, and chatted with a guy doing a section.  Semplesee took off but I saw him and PMo at the road. Hitched in without much of a problem in the back of a Tacoma belonging to a marine.  We offered to buy him a beer at the brewery but he turned out to be the local Sheriff on his way to work. Smooth. Real smooth.King, Jiffy Pop, Hot Wheels, Trooper were all there and not only had they already ordered, but their food was being delivered. This was an advantage for us. We could see what we were in for and what we were in for was going to be incredible. There was so much food.  I ordered the Smokehouse burger with an egg.  PMo got the DB Western.  Beers were ordered.  I tried their Sage Vision Quest, a beer I had only ever heard about in beer mythology. Semplesee cleaned his plate.  We ordered their hummus appetizer, fried pickles, and a bunch of veggies. It was a disaster. You just couldn't help yourself. There was no thinking here. It was all so good. So damn good. I had already eaten too much food and my stomach was hurting something fierce.Badger and Squishy walked in as I was ordering the cobbler.  It was a pretty raucous party by then. We were easily a $1000 table that night. But it was pouring rain outside and the trail was a long way away. Nobody was going to give us a hitch. Nobody was thinking about what we were going to do. It didn't matter. It wasn't raining in the brewery and they were still open and serving us smile after smile. There was a large pavilion on the property and I think we were all eyeing the space as our safe haven for the night.The manager did one better. He unlocked an old coffee shop on the property and tried his best to turn off the alarm for us due to horrendous monsoon. The alarm would beep-beep-beep every four minutes but it didn't seem to matter.  The coffee shop was beautiful. Hardwood floors, big ceilings, lots of space, windows with great views, and a roof that not only protected us from the pouring rain, but it made a wonderful sound allowing us to appreciate how good we had it. Unfortunately, I had sent my sleeping pad home.  But I put it out there to the group and asked, "I know this sounds crazy, but does anybody have an extra sleeping pad?" As it turns out, Hot Wheels had won one at Trail Days that leaked. He was using it as a ground cloth and lent it to me for the night.  I had been unable to finish my beer as well as my cobbler and went to sleep feeling so bad. I wondered if I had done something wrong, something that wouldn't simply repair itself. My whole body was shutting down. And I surrendered to the pain finding the most comfortable position to lay in. I was thankful that I was dry, sleeping on a comfy inflatable mat, and surrounded by friends. If you have to die anyway, this wouldn't be such a bad way to go.