April 25-26 wandering between NC/TN

April 25, 2005 | Day 29 | Miles: 16 | Total Miles: 297.1
End: Jerry Cabin Shelter
Danielle:
Sunny and cool
Two notable things happened today.
One: At 9:45am, we reached a gap where there was a sign to turn right for trail magic. FAL (Free at last) and Hercules, thru-hikers from 1999, had opened their home to thru-hikers and were serving beef stew (I passed), drinks and a yummy ice cream creation for dessert. Perfect snack.
It was so generous of them to do this! What a wonderful treat. All this trail magic really restores our faith in human kindness. We can't wait to do some of our own next year :-)
Two: Bizarre occurrence of the day. This afternoon, we were hiking along near Crazy Legs and Montana Gal, two of a four-person crew, with Catch23 and Scavenger, from the west, who are all very cool. Crazy Legs and catch23 did the Pacific Crest Trail, which goes from Mexico up through California. Supposed to be gorgeous. Anyway, we're hiking along and we see a male peacock in the trail. Decorative peacock with blue neck and huge 4-ft. plummage. It looked like a hallucination, and might have been if we weren't all there. It was not scared of us and as we snapped photos, it settled down in the trail, and then wandered off through the woods. Crazy! What is the natural environment of a peacock? It can't be the NC woods! What was it doing there? DOUG, our resident bird expert, can you clue us in please?! Kept us laughing for the rest of the afternoon. Bizarre! :-)

Ryan, April 25:
sunny, cold, breezy
peacocks are not indigenous to north carolina, right? then what was it doing in the middle of the trail? let's just say it was a bit unexpected. great trail magic today from former thruhikers, hercules and fal, who moved 300 yards from the trail. very cool. "oh, i guess i can have some ice cream." so, we walked today and it was beautiful. no complaints. getting ready for rain tomorrow.

April 26, 2005 | Day 30 | Miles 14.7 | Total Miles: 311.8
End: Hogback Ridge Shelter
Danielle:
Cold, windy and overcast
Well, another cold morning. Brrrr... But on we hike. We passed the 300 mile mark today. Wow. That's pretty cool. It really was a nice day of hiking. We went through some old farming meadows and went up along a beautiful stream with a big waterfall. We hiked most of the morning with Free Radical and he was telling silly jokes the whole time. My favorite: What is red, green and flies? Super Pickle! Of course :-) Should have guessed that.
We got into this shelter a bit early, at 2:45pm, after leaving at 8:10am. We had contemplated going on, but I was feeling pretty tired for the last few miles, so we decided to stay here. Also it's supposed to rain today--who knows? It hasn't yet--so we're in the shelter just in case. Three days of shelter living. We're getting soft :-) It's pretty chilly and windy though, so we'll likely be in our bags early. I picked up a book at Jerry Cabin--there were a few left in the register bin. It's about the 1925 dog team relay of diptheria serum up to Nome, Alaska, which is the route the Ididarod currently runs on. Sounds interesting.
If we can, we'll do 20m tomorrow, so we only have 6m into Erwin the next day. Then we should be able to get all our errands done that afternoon and get back out the next morning. But we'll see how it goes... :-)

Ryan:
mostly cloudy, windy
three nights in a row in shelters. rare for us. the first night, it was just cold. last night, we thought it was going to rain overnight. tonight, it definitely looks like it's going to rain. so, we're under cover. we've lucked out with the rain so far in the last couple days. i probably never should have typed that. today was great. we started with a climb over a bald...which was named big butt mountain. long climb later in the day with a nice waterfall. decent views. no complaints. we did see a bunch of bear tracks along the trail, which was cool. danielle was feeling a little tired in the afternoon...we did do 30+ miles in the last two days. we're on good pace to erwin...so, no worries. stomach is rumbling...dinnertime.
today's song - heavy cloud, no rain - sting