My hiking is getting in the way of my Appalachian adventure

We've done two months of research and have discovered that walking is in fact terrible for you. 

We sort of hit a wall after mile 566 and decided we needed a break sooner than our planned week off at Stephanie's family reunion the week of July 5th because we were both hiking on overuse injuries. This led to several turtle pace days in which we had all of the time in the world to day dream about all of the places we want to visit on the east coast, and one very defeated phone call from the side of a mountain, which naturally led to Steph and her mom buying a car and making all of our dreams come true. While Steph and her mom were sorting out logistics we stayed and worked at woods hole hostel for 11 days. Neville and Michael welcomed us into their home and showed us that stranger kindness that keeps shining it's pretty face for us all over Appalachia. We had a week and a half of being barefoot on an organic farm while we helped Neville prepare community meals from scratch for all of our friends and fellow hikers as they passed through. Every morning we did yoga on the lawn and every afternoon we helped clean, organize, or do any odd jobs around the hostel and farm. It was a dream. We are now cheating and following the trail up to all of the highlights that we wanted to hike and skipping all of the hot, dry, monotonous parts and going to tons of cool places too far to hike to, like dc. And Boston. And canada. And we're taking some new friends with us and delivering some trail magic along the way to pay it forward. It's called yellow blazing and it's kind of said with a sneer by the purists but hey. It's our adventure. 

Steph graduated and we had a proper woodland graduation ceremony. We hiked up enough beer for the 12 other hikers present to each partake in a toast and then we celebrated with fireworks, fireflies, and a howl at a full moon. 

Unicorn, skipper, Neville, me, charlotte's web, and charlotte's web's mom. Awesome, awesome, awesome people. 

Hiker feet. Lemmy, from Israel. 

We ran into a crowd of Amish kids. We all stared at each other like 'man you guys live strange lives' 

Our first stop with the Subaru (which I have named Sinead Oconnor, and Steph hates it, but she'll come around) was a replica of Stonehenge called foamhenge. Of course. 

On to dc to compare biceps with Michelle Obama, hang out with giant Abe Lincoln, and find mortal kombat Jesus. 

Does this smell like chloroform to you?

Greetings from mile 463, Damascus, Virginia! Damascus is called "the friendliest town on the trail", and for good reason. I like it here. We decided to celebrate reaching Va by sleeping in beds for the second time since the beginning of our trip at a very dog friendly hostel, and by imbibing at the local microbrewery with some hiker family.

Events over the past few weeks include slug rain, (it actually rained slugs. It was sticky and they were all over Seamus.) hiding in a barn during a storm, one ill-timed torrential downpour that led to several frantic poor decisions, being kidnapped by a lady with short term memory loss, watching Harry Potter in the tent as a calming mechanism after an argument with a hostel owner that I am still slightly bitter about, a day of garden work for a good crazy lady with a bad crazy neighbor (she houses and feeds hikers, he yells at people and starts his lawn mower and shoots guns at 4:30 every morning just to be an asshole) Amanda Christmas, swimming in lake watauga, speed hiking past fabled angry bear moms, replacing my backpack with a children's pack because I am officially the size of a pre-teen, and being reunited with some long lost trail family. 

Thank you so much Gigi and Pawpaw, dad and Melissa, mom, and Cassidy for Amanda Christmas. We walked to Greasy Creek hostel to pick up 'a few mail drops'. The hostel owner asked me wide-eyed if I was Hancock, and when I confirmed, proceeded to laugh maniacally as she brought out box after box and then took pictures of me as the record holder for most packages. I feel so much love and support from my family it's incredible. It was an amazing night and it was great to share cookies and snacks with my friends and try on my new fancy hiking get-ups. 

Victory stance.

I am going to refrain from detailing out the rest of last weeks adventures, however, because I'm pretty proud of myself for finally remembering to take a picture of a shelter and so want to dedicate this post to some trail history and how-to. 

The idea for the Appalachian trail was fronted by a conservationist named Benton Mckaye in the 20's. He wanted the trail to essentially be a series of rustic communes that were connected along the Appalachian mountains. Long story short, a lot of people interested in long distance hiking and not so much rustic communes took the idea of a trail from Maine to Georgia and ran with it, or maybe just walked with it quickly while carrying large packs. Communes or no, early on the trail was never intended to be completed as a single hike. The first thru hike documented was by a World War II vet named Earl V. Schaffer in 1948, after which he was admonished for not using the trail for it's intended purpose and thereby accidentally creating a wonderful culture of hooligans that give each other weird nick names and try to walk over 2100 miles in an average of 6 months for fun. 

The trail is marked with white blazes that look like this. 

Sometimes they're on rocks or posts, but usually they're on trees. After over 6 weeks of heavily relying on them for navigation, I become disoriented and nervous if I don't see one within 10 minutes of the last. 

About every 8-10 miles there is a shelter. Some of them are nicer than others, and nice ones also have bear cables, privies, picnic tables, and once even running water and a shower. 

I want to say there are 60-something different organizations that maintain the trail. They also build and maintain the shelters. 

For the curious, I even snapped a pic of a throne. Some shelters have composting toilets, so we can feel slightly less lord of the flies. They usually have doors but this one had such a wonderful view! 

We approach towns or hostels or convenience stores at least once a week, usually more often than that. There are loads of people out here on more reasonable day or weekend hikes, some on long 400 or 500 mile section hikes, and about 30 people within our bubble that are attempting thru hikes. The last number I heard for this year's total count of thru hikers was somewhere around 1,400. People hiking northbound usually start between early march and late April. 1 in 4 people that start with the intention of thru hiking make it to Katahdin, the northern terminus for the trail. It closes for the year on October 15th or sometimes sooner if the weather is bad. 

I found a great list of possible threats on the trail.

I can think of about 50 things besides water that can give hikers diarrhea. honey buns or norovirus or pizza plus for example. Speaking of water, there are fresh springs or creeks at every shelter and usually more in between. We use Sawyer mini squeeze filters as do most people, and usually carry 2 liters at a time. Its a nice change from the micro-pur chlorine tabs we used at philmont. Bleh. We also carry about a week of food at a time. The dogs carry most of their own food but I carry some of Seamus'. The only luxury items in my pack right now are a hammock and a kindle. I don't weigh my pack but I think it's usually between 30 and 40 pounds with full food and water. 

There were lots of waterfalls this week! The terrain is leveling out but still gorgeous and we are hiking longer distances every day. Here's to mile 500 in a few days! 

Jennifer Lawrence would be lucky to know you

I had a dream a few weeks ago that I met Jennifer Lawrence and was trying to befriend her to no avail. After telling my dream to Steph, she turned around to say "Jennifer Lawrence would be lucky to know you!" As I was mid snot-rocket. Jennifer Lawrence, you would be so lucky to know me. 

Today we are in Hot Springs, NC. Mile 274 on the AT. We took a zero day here yesterday to soak in the city's namesake and eat eat eat. We are trying to keep it sleazy by camping in free places near towns instead of in hotels or hostels, but it's difficult not to buy all of the food on the menu every time we eat in a restaurant. We hiked 18 miles in hail and rain to get here, and promptly went to a tavern still trail dirty and wet. I ate nachos, fried pickles, a veggie burger, chili cheese fries, and 2 beers for dinner. Beautiful. I could probably write my entire blog about all of the food we dream about while we're hiking. My parents made my dreams come true by mailing no bake cookies (thanks mom!) and pickles, peanut butter, jelly, and other treats. (Thanks dad and Melissa!) 

The Smokies were prefaced by Fontana Dam, a giant dam that makes a giant beautiful lake that we had the pleasure of paddle boarding on one morning and swimming in several times. We had a hard time tearing ourselves away from it, despite the fact that we had our first angry hillbilly on a horse with a golf club encounter here. Someone "went on his property and scared his wife." They do exist! 

The next morning we woke up before sunrise and hiked to the start of Great Smoky Mountains National Park after a painful goodbye to the dogs. They had to be boarded for the week at a hostel we hiked to at the other end of the park because no pets are allowed on nps backcountry land. The first day in, the weather was beautiful. Then I jinxed the rest of the week by saying "I imagined it would be rainy and cold every day we were here!" The only day it didn't rain and it was above 60 degrees serendipitously happened to be the day that we hiked to the highest point on the entire AT. We woke up at 4:30 and hiked to the top of Clingmans Dome to witness the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen. I'm not a morning person at all, but it was worth it. There are so many different flowers, trees, and animals in the park. I finally saw a bear! Or at least it's ass as it ran into the forest because I startled it on accident as I was coming up a side trail from fetching some water. 

Now that we have the dogs back we probably won't be seeing very many large animals except for them. We are putting in longer days now that we have our trail legs and the terrain is starting to level out a little more, so we are looking forward to mile 300 in two days. 

ATTN: someone make me a trail star please. 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00HCRR5LQ/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1400426259&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40

And locate me a hot pink biketard. I met a grandma hiking in one of these (but blue) and immediately became insanely jealous. I need to one-up this broad. 

My next location will be this address in about 5 days. 

Attn: Hold for thru hiker Hancock

151 River Road 

Erwin, TN 37650

Or in about a week

Attn: hold for thru hiker Hancock

1827 Greasy Creek Road

Bakerville, NC 28705 

If anyone sends anything (letters, cookies, biketards, bills, hostage letters, a swift kick in the pants, large sums of money, etc) just send me a text or a Facebook message and let me know so I know to pick it up! 

I love my friends and family and I miss you all. 

Meet thunder and lightning...

We stayed in our first AT shelter last night after braving a mighty storm that kept us up and uneasy the night before. (Some light teasing has followed because I made us sit in the lightning position off and on all night... A.k.a the kiss your ass goodbye position. But really it was that close!)  We tend to camp near but not in the shelters so we can enjoy the social benefit of them without dealing with the mice and with the snores of 10 other hikers. I'll try to remember to take a picture of one next time. As luck would have it the shelter we hiked to last night was 1) brand spankin' new, 2) next to a stellar water supply, and 3) only inhabited by some friends of ours that happen to love our dogs. It was nice to watch last night's storm with more than a thin sheet of nylon separating us from it. In other news, yesterday we hit 100 AT miles! Unfortunately the AT doesn't include the wicked 8.8 mile 'approach trail' to the trailhead on top of springer, but it still felt like a huge accomplishment to have hiked 100 official miles. Especially because the 100 mile marker was essentially on top of a 500 foot finger sticking out of the ground. Several parts of the trail were literal rock climbs straight up. Zooey attempted to sit on my head while I pushed her butt up several of the faces. Seamus was a mountain goat in a past life so he had no problem. Somewhere is a picture of me being terrified of heights on top of the lookout tower that was on top of the giant finger/mountain/100 mile marker. Unfortunately a lot of our pictures are on a camera that is holding them hostage to the Internet. Today we caught a shuttle to the town of Franklin on a whim because we were craving pizza and beer and decided that maybe we should finally shower. Cassidy mailed me some dog food via Amazon Prime (probably invented by Jesus. Free 2 day shipping!) So this morning I woke up at 6 and ran 6 miles with Seamus down a mountain and a forest road to a forest service campsite to pick up my parcel, and then back with 15lbs of kibbles in time to catch the shuttle to Franklin with Steph and some other hikers. My dog better love me. 

We will be in the Smoky Mountains in less than a week! 

At some point in recent history we also crossed the North Carolina/Georgia border! 

You can't spell crippled without ripped!

I think by the time we are through with hiking I will have an Oakland booty. If the view in front of us ever begs the question "which of the mountains in front of us are we about to go up?" The answer is just "yes." 

 

All of the views are beautiful, the hikes are incredibly tough and rewarding, and the people we've met have been interesting and helpful and nice. (Excluding exactly one individual, who everyone on the trail has been calling 'Bear Grylls' but not before they make a point to hike faster than him.) Last night we stopped at a hiker hostel to chat and resupply  a few things, with the intent of doing our business and hiking on. Before we could leave, we were urged to stay and hang out for a few beers from a previous thru-hiker and a delicious home cooked buffet free-for-all-hiking-dream dinner of Mac n cheez, green beans, salad, bread and tea from a local church. It was a good night. The experience of the kindness of absolute strangers is enough to make this trip fulfilling in and of itself. On the AT, hikers call it Trail Magic. We've already come across quite a bit of it. Add the physical challenge, the comraderie among the hikers, the beauty of the east coast, and free food and beer and I don't see what isn't to love. We've only been out for a week now, though. Maybe by next week the smell of my armpits will get the best of me. Or maybe we will make it all the way to Maine. We'll see what the dogs say. We will be in North Carolina in 4-ish days. I'm going to post an address on Facebook of a hostel we will be at about a week from now if anyone wants to mail us any goodies :) if I don't have your address already, send it to me and I will send post cards!

Does anyone know what kind of flower this is?

Bud Light Lime, Because Regular Bud Light Is Bad For My Baby...

snax on snax

Wake up in the morning thinking about why you're glad to be awake. Move and stretch. Go to bed exhausted every night. Don't be afraid of your own sweat. Be nice to strangers and the favor will be returned. Don't be afraid of hospitality and be hospitable when you can and you will always be well fed. Follow what you dream about, what stirs you late at night. Always be prepared for rain. Hike. A lot. Don't waste time. Fix what you break. There's nothing to make you appreciate a roof and coffee like sleeping and hiking in the pouring rain for days. Have a laughing fit at least once a day. If there's a porch swing, you better damn well swing on it. There is ALWAYS time to pet baby goats. Food tastes way better when you've carried it on your back for miles. Write letters. Write lists. Even if your work is what you love, do something that isn't work in your spare time. Listen to your peers. Listen to your boss. Listen to old timers with good stories. Listen to bugs. Listen to people that have done it before. Listen to your body. Listen to the birds. Listen. Listen. Listen.
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