morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2009-04-13
To: Deer Park Shelter
Miles today: 15.0

today was a long day for some reason. we met up with traveling narwal which was awesome! we didnt get started 'til 1130am, teehee, knees and i totally slept in. but it allowed us to meet up with narwal, so that was cool. we hiked together and got lost like 3 different times. reeediculous. sometimes the switch backs are hard to see and you just keep walked straight and before you know it, you are in the middle of no where. good thing we had each other.it got hot for a while but we decided to take lunch at a shelter we were passing, but the shelter was on top of a mountain where the wind was just blowing like crazy! so it was freezing up there! my fingers felt like they were ganna fall off. it felt good to start hiking agian and warm up!with about 4.5 miles left we came to a bag of apples hanging from a tree! someone left us trail magic!! awww yeeaehh! it was the best tasting apple ive ever had!unfortunitly though, the next 4.5 miles was horrible! it was mostly down hill and my right big toe started to jam into my boot and got a huge bruis. also my achiels tendan was hurting aggin and my knees. so when i got the shelter it felt amazing to sit down. it was full so i set up my tent (knees has the same one, it was funny) and we had a nice fire and all socailized. and i have met my match when it comes to gas man! this dude there, once he heard me tooting, realazed it was cool, so then he started to let it rip and ive got some compitition, let me tell you! it was hilarious! the poor kid sitting between us though! lol
Date: 2009-04-14
From: Roaring Fork Shelter

To: Elmers Hostel, Hot Springs, NC
Miles today: 3.0
Weather: light rain

so today was a nice easy walk into town. it rained on us just a little but we were lucky it didnt rain on us last night. ihad to set my tent up cuase the shelter was full and didnt want to have to take my tent down in the rain, thast the worst. soo muddy and annoying. but i lucked otu and only got rained on for about an hr of my walk.we walked right into town and right into a diner for breakfast. i ate sooooo much food, it was amazing! then i got the last bed at elmers hostel where they only cook organic vegitarian food. its sooo great! i have a room to myself with a double bed, i took a hot shower and did my laundry already. ill be back on the trail tomorrow though. im glad i only had a short 3 miles today cause yesterday my right achiels tendand started to hurt, not too bed, but it hurt. then this morning after breakfast i noticed it was a bit swollen. i guess achiels tendanitis is pretty common in thru-hikers and is really painful. so i just hope im not getting that. i guess if i ice it and ellivate it it should help. so im glad im basically taking the day off today to do that. i might even go in the 'hot springs' they have here with some people. im very excited about that. so the dinner at elmers was reeeediculous! it may have been one of the best meals ive ever had in my life! i could not breath afterwards! the soup, salad, dinner and dessert was just to die for! ive never had such good vegitarian food in my life!!! later we had some beers and i hung out with krank who i have just met. hes really cool! i met up with tax dollar too at the end of the night and met this really chill girl named kim. so we were up pretty late drinking and having a good time. knees ended up getting hammered! it was hilarious! he was hurtin the next morning thats for sure
Date: 2009-04-15
From: Elmers Hostel, Hot Springs, NC

To: camp
Miles today: 12.4
Weather: overcast clouds

before i left town i ate breakfast at the hostel again to have the amazing veggie meals. the cantalope display was soo cool! i went to the outfitter then and baught a skirt! im really excited about it. itll make changing much easier and going to the bathroom too! hehe. i also picked up some new raingear since mine was NOT working what so ever.today was a nice walk. there was a HUGE incline in the bigginning, but it wasn't too bad. i hiked with knees, krank, leon and his hound dog ruffus, who is like the cuuuttest dog alive! hes soo good too! im obsessed with him! funny part of the morning was that we couldnt find where the trail went. it braught up straight through town but then you had to jump over the gard rail to get to the rest of it. i was happy to be hiking with friends so i was lost looking like an idiot. so the raingear i baught ripped in about.... 15 minutes of hiking. i was tooootaly pissed! im ganna call the company and see what i can do about it. it was ganna be a nice night out so krank, leon and ruffus, knees, taxdollar, and spaceman and i all decided we'd camp instead of doing the shelter thing. it was really great actually! we had a nice fire and i really like hanging with these guys! and the dog, oh my god!! i got to sleep with him in my tent, it was sooo great!
Date: 2009-04-16
From: camp

To: camp
Miles today: 17.6
Weather: scattered clouds

so today was my longest day yet. and i felt it! but it was really nice cause i stopped a bunch of times and spread it out. and... i had the most amazing trail magic to start it off with.we were crossing a road after about 2 miles of walking in the day and there was a sign that read "trail magic, april 16th and 17th from 9am-7pm" and it was april 16th! so we hiked just a few houndred yards down the raod to where the house was and they were sooo nice! their names were 'fal' and 'hercules' and they hiked the AT 10 years ago and have been doing this trail magic for 5 years. so it started with a drink list of pretty much anything we wanted. i choose orange juice to start with. sooooooo amazing! spaceman asked for a rootbeer and the lady goes "do you want that in a chilled glass? and would you like ice cream in it?" CRAAZY! i about died when i heard that. hercules had to tell me to sit back and take a deep breath! then we each had a belgin waffle and then they had stew but also veggie chillie for me that they poored over rice. it was sooooo good. THEN, we had dessert which was a whole bunch of options, but i choose a banana split and it was the best, most biggest and prettiest banana split i had ever seen! when i got the thing i was about to explode already cause i was so full, but i had to put that whole thing down, and i did. it was sooo amazing!so none of us were ready to hike after we ate all that food so spaceman and i layed in these peoples hammack for a little bit and let the food settle. we started hiking again about 12:30pm.the hiking after that went really slow, but we had the rest of the day to do it, so it was cool. all of us met up and camped again, but spaceman didnt make it that far. i felt alright, i mean i was soooo tired, but not painfully tired. my achelis tenden hurt a little bit with all the rocks. there was some beautiful views though man. this one part i was hiking alone and ended up at the very top of the mountain where there was just these huge rocks and the sky was soo blue and it was so quite up there. it was one of my favorite times so far. the hard part though was going back down the mountain with my stupid tenden hurting. the rocks were all slanted and just would hurt my tenden when it was angle my ankle all crazy. i took it really slow on the decline.we had another fire at camp but this time there was a huge dead tree that we were sitting on that had all these branches all over it, so the guys got sooo into it and all started just throwing wood on the fire like crazy! i mean this fire was HUUUGE! it was really funny to sit back and watch all the guys do this. knees said at one point, "man, i just wanna burn something" and thats when he got up and joined in the fun. it was really funny. we all had to move back it was so hot. good times
Date: 2009-04-18
From: camp- low gap

To: No Buirsness Shelter
Miles today: 14.8

man it was soo nice again today! the clouds were rolling in but the sun was still shinning! we hit this place called Big Bald and man was it awesome! it had a 360 view of the mountains and no trees! it was sooo cool. another favorite place for sure. i met up with everyone on top of the bald and we sat there for a little bit, catching our breath and resting from the huge climbe up. we finally met minnisota smith on the bald. and he is something else that man. hes like in his 60's and thru- hiked in '06 and thinks he knows everything! he will find any way possible to tell you a story or give you advice about hiking the trail. its kinda funny actually. rediculous though! i mean, hes totally nice, but there are people out here who have hiked this trail before, or who have hiked it several times before and they dont act like masters of the trail like this guy does. so funny man. we all have this joke about "back in '97 when i thru-hiked" kinda making fun of these 'masters' of the trail.and then to actually meet someone like it, it was great. i met up with krank, leon and ruggus and spaceman at the top of a mountain on this huge rock. it was nice, we ate some lunch and listened to some music and just hung out. we were in the shade so the bugs werent as bad. thats the thing about nice hot days, whenever you find a nice spot in the sun that bugs just go crazy and you cant relax. its verry annoying. i cant wait to get my bug spray back!we had more trail magic today! we were hiking and came to a stream that had sunny d in it and apples, oranges and bananas. it was awesome! the sunny d was amazing! i dont even like sunny d, but it went down in seconds!! i had a banana there and took an orange to go. we got the shelter and no one else we there. it was pretty much just our group at first. so we all got a spot in the shelter and then more people came who had to camp. it was nice getting a spot in the shelter though cause it was sopposed to rain in the middle of the night and the next morning. i met some more cool people for the first time, we had a nice fire and all hung out. one of the guys i met said he saw two little tiny bear cubs on the trail and actually snapped a picture of them! he was probebly only an hr behind me too! its crazy to think that we're hiking near these animals and dont even know it! its cool that he saw the bear cubs, but also sooo scary cause seeing cubs means moms around and that is when shell be nasty man. but nothing happened so it was cool.so this shelter doesnt have bear cables (cables that they have at shelters usually to hang your food cause the bears have been chewing the strings of hikers bear bags) actually big camera and his brother had all their food stolen from a bear bag earlier in the month.any ways, so the shelter had no bear cables, no privy and the water was like .5 miles away! it was horrible! (i know, we're getting spoiled with the other shelters). i guess we're hiking through a bear sanctuay too, so you would think they would definilty put up cables. werid.
Date: 2009-04-20
From: Erwin, TN

To: Camp
Miles today: 12.0
Weather: light rain

So I woke up kinda hungover this morning from having a few beers last night with everyone in the abandon appartment we stayed in. i decided to get a ride into town and catch up on some emails and journals and pick up another mail drop from mom. (thanks mom!)then taxdollar and i got back to the appartment at around 1pm and everyone else had moved on already. so we packed up our stuff and got a ride to the trail and started hiking at about 3pm. a late start, but only had to do 12 miles. we were hiking REALLY fast and made it to the tenting site where everyone else was in about 4 hrs! so we were pretty pooped only after 12 miles cause of how fast we were going.we put up our tents, which knees had to help me cause of how windy it was. it would have been impossible for me to do it on my own. i made dinner in kranks tent with him cause i could sit down in there and have his tent block the wind so my dinner could cook. (i cant sit up in my tent, so that wouldnt have worked)there were about 10 of us at this camp site so it was pretty cool, but the crapy part was that it was sooo damn cold and windy out that everyone just wanted to get into their sleeping bags. so we hit the sack pretty early that night. it was so cold that i slept in all my clothes including my entire rain gear suite. it definitly helped keep me warm
Date: 2009-04-21
From: Camp

To: Clyde Smith Shelter
Miles today: 14.0
Weather: moderate rain

I woke up in my tent this morning to the sound of rain. ugh, never a good sound to wake up to. so i layed around listening to everyone else around me pack up camp and head on out. i didnt end up getting up 'til 10:30am, but im glad i waited cause the rain stopped and the sun came out long enough for me to hang my tent over a tree branch and dry it before packing it up.taxdollar, knees, and i were to only ones left at the camp site later and ended up hitting the trail at about noon.as i was starting the sun was out but it was still pretty windy. then all of a sudden, it started hailing! when we left town locals told us we were going into 80 degree weather, so this hail was a complete surprise! it was probebly 45 degrees out too. and it was coming down so hard and fast that i had to look directly down to avoid it from stinging my face. so with the hail was also started the morning (or should say afternoon) with a big clime. for some reason, this 14 mile day was dragging on and on for me! i was soooooo poooped by the time i hit the shelter. an di was really luckey and got the last spot in the shelter so i didt have to set up a tent again (plus it was sopposed to rain again). there was another pretty large clime at the end of the day which was just killing my legs! i just felt soo tired for some reason! when we rested at the shelter before this one for lunch we couldnt stay too long cause once we stopped moving, the cold wind would just freeze you up again.krank and spaceman are crazy and decided to move on and do like an 18-20 miler again, crazy! but taxdollar, knees and i stayed at the shelter with a bunch of other people. i met 'the man' and his dog abby, who is adorible! i also met "tank" who is this kid who looks EXXXACTLY like jake gillahal (spelling?) yeeahhh... it was pretty sweet to hang out with his identical twin
Date: 2009-04-22
From: Clyde Smith Shelter

To: Over Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 13.0
Weather: scattered clouds

So i woke up absolutly freezing this morning and to snow on the ground! we were all in shock! it took me a while to get out of my sleeping bag thats for sure. it was only 29 degrees out at about 9am. brrrr. i left earlier today at about 10am. its a lot easier for me to wake up in the morning when i sleep in the shelters rather than in my tent. i think its the noise of everyone around me getting up that keeps me from sleeping in too late. im in my own little world when im in my tent. i actually like it better waking up early though. espeically if i have a lot of miles to put in that daywe started the day with a big clime which warmed me up fast. i started with my fleece jacket, gloves and hat on and about 1/2 hr into the hike i had to take everything off. i warmed up so fast! the clime we steep but i felt really good today. it was hard but i felt strong. i actually ended up passing a bunch of poeple who left before me. the man was calling me the energizer bunny. tank, the man and abby and me stopped at the highest shelter on th e AT for lunch at the top of this mountain. but after sitting down for 5 minutes i ended up getting freezing again! it was soooo windy up there and snowy and everything was covered in ice. so after resting and eating a snickers bar i decided to keep moving to regain feeling in my finger tips, i was so cold!i arrived at the shelter at 4:30pm which was a big old red barn that was actually used as a back drop in some movie at some time. it was really cool, it could sleep like 50 people and had an amazing view! so we slept facing the view and i was luckey enough to have abby the dog come in my sleeping bag with me and keep me warm. i actually got to zip the two of us in my bag, it was awesome!
Date: 2009-04-23
From: Over Mountain Shelter

To: Mountainear Shelter
Miles today: 18.2
Weather: clear sky

so waking up was wonderful! it was sooo pretty outside with the view we had at the barn/shelter! (oh and in the middle of the night i had to go to the bathroom, so i got up and walked outside of the shelter and right when i finished i saw a black animal walking towards me and it scared the living day lights outa me! luckily it was only abby, but man, seeing an animal that size that is black coming towards you out here, all you think is bear!)we hiked up little hump and big hump mountain today. they were really cool actually. balds too, so they had no trees on top, but grassy fields. but it was still a little windy from the day before and with no trees the wind was almost knocking me over! it was hard to walk a straight line. so itwas hard to clime up a mountain and try to not fall over at the same time! as i was climing i kept thinking i was getting to the top and then there would suddenly be more mountain to clime! it was such a tease! but once i got to the actual top there was a 360 view of the mountains and it was amazing. we were looking down and were actully above birds flying, very cool.the second half of my day went horribly. i think i didnt eat enough food cause i just felt soooo tired. like i didnt have enough energy or something. so ill have to start eating more to keep my energy up, cause my muscels felt fine i just was exhusted!so im two days behing truckin, 1 day behind joe kickasss and i think 1 1/2 days behind krank and spaceman. i hope i can catch them all soon. we got to the shelter which was bran spankin new, it was built in 2006 and could sleep 14! very cool. was a triple decker! it was finally warm enough to hang outside of your sleeping bag and the wind was calm enough to have a fire so that was really cool. knees and i got the thing started and it was a really great fire. it was a really warm night though. the first one we've had actually. i slept with my sleeping bag unzipped and didnt need to snuggle with anyone to stay warm.
Date: 2009-04-24
From: Mountainear Shelter

To: Laurel Fork Shelter
Miles today: 17.4
Weather: clear sky

it was nice to wake up and not be freezing. it actually gets me start moving earlier cause i dont dread coming out of my bag!so it ended up being another long day which i didnt expect. it was nice though. knees and i were the last ones out again! i dont know why people get up so damn early when we have sunlight so late in the day! we headed out at about 10:30am, not too bad.it wasnt sopposed to be a hard day today but for some reason it was horrible! i felt like i was on a tredmill, it just kept winding through the thick woods and you couldnt see if you were making any progress. it just felt like we were walking in circles going no where. so it was a boring hike for sure which made it feel like it took forever. it took knees and i over 4 hours to like 9.5 miles, which is really a long time at this piont into the trip. at 9.5 miles was the shelter we stopped at for lunch and we met up with goggle there. we ate some food and started moving again pretty soon cause we decided we wanted that in 6 more miles we would hike .3 miles down the road to a hostel and pick up some ice cream and soda, mmmm....when we started hiking, this stray black hound dog who was laying around the shelter began to follow us. she followed us all the way to the raod. she was reeeaaally cute, i felt bag for her though cause she was all alone. im hoping that someone in town would pick her up or something.when we got to the raod at another 6 miles we walked to .3 miles to the hostel and ran into everyone from the shelter the night before who decided to do that same thing. when the owner got there and opened his little store i got two cokes and downed them both in like 10 minutes, it was amazing! everyone decided to order food form this bbq place that would deliver to the hostel, not me though, i made some good old rice but we asked the delivery guy if he could stop and pick us up a case of beer ad he did! it was great. so that was a really nice treat.so we ate up and finished off the beers and then head back to the trial at around 7pm with only 2 miles to go to get to the next shelter. we didnt think anything of it, we were a little saucy but it was only 2 miles. well... these two miles no one told us were steap up and down rocky stairs! it was crazy! and it was dusk so we were loosing light by the minute! we made it once piece though, it was all good. funny really, we got lost at one point and everything. lots of laughs and lots of trips!it was another warm night tonight. i slept with the sleeping bag unzipped and with only two layers on. its crazy to think just a few days ago i was sleeping in my full rain gear to stay warm!
Date: 2009-04-25
From: Laurel Fork Shelter

To: Elizebthontin
Miles today: 7.0

it was a beautiful day agian today! actually, a little too hot to tell you the truth! we had a HUUUUGE clime in the morning, i mean huge! the profile of the elivation looked like a pyramid, straight up and then straight down. and thats pretty much exactly what it was.we started at about 9:30am, goggle, knees and i. i had sweat dripping off my nose at one point and was just dieing of the heat! it was sopposed to get up to 90 degrees today! we made it to the raod at Watauga Lake at around noon. which was perfect timing cause knees has a friend who grew up right around there whos mom still lives here. so knees's friends mom picked knees, goggle and i up and took us to their house. fed us pizza, coke and beer! it was amazing!!!!!!!!i took a nice long hot shower, and my wash cloth was no longer white, but a brown color after, gross!we went to the outfitter and then to the store to pick up a few days worth of food that should last us until demascus (the next town). then we came back did some laundry and we had guacmoli and cheese dip with margaritas and then had dinner! which was amazing! after we had strawberry short cake. it was absolute heaven. i cant even tell you how nice this family is. they were just amazing. thank you so much!!!one of the things im realizing out here is that 75% of hikers conversations revolve around food. seriously. i think i talk or at least think about food for more than half of my day. its crazy! but its actually not torture like it might be to an average person fantisizing about food, b/c i can actually eat it. maybe not right there at that time, but when i get to a town i ccan have all the ice cream, soda, pizza, or beer that i want. so its fun to think about food cause i know i can have it!!!! so far i have hiked 421.5 miles. almost at the quarter mark (500 miles). its just so crazy. i dont think ill be doing 17-18ner days after demascus, im ganna try and keep it around 14-16 miles. too many of the longe ones just seem to poop me out after a few. and im in no rush.