Day Thirteen

Day 13 

5/20/12

Caught the shuttle with Sally. She and her partner, Joyce, own property here and run a shuttle to town and back for extra income. Nice lady. Everyone has been so nice and friendly. There’s a man named Yogi who has set up camp right here at Dick’s Creek Gap. He’s just been living off of what the hikers give him. He offered me a beer at 10:00 a.m. this morning. Funny guy.

Sally picked up his trash to take back to town. She said she liked me and that I had “moxie.” I hadn’t heard that phrase for a long time. The next morning I took off and felt very brave.

Note to self- keep a list of names I have been called while on this trail. Oh, the guy with the gauges in his ears called me ‘Sugar’ as he went by. Yuk.

I took some time getting to Plum Orchard Shelter. Only passed a couple of people. Now there are people that are heading in the opposite direction. I don’t pass anyone, but I had about 4 people pass me on the way. I only had about 4 ½ miles to go today so I took my time and took lots of pictures.

  So far, Zig Zag is here, Bob, of course, Swamp Doggy, who is a geology engineer and Gandolph, who is a history major.  In came Detour, Timber and Machete, because he’s hauled a useless machete all this way and only used it twice. It weighs 1 lb.

 The two logs used to be a tree that they cut because it fell on the trail. I like to sit and rest on these. Flowers, flowers everywhere. This one huge tree had fallen and they had to repair the trail with trees and rocks. I hadn’t shown the signs before but they are all like this. Even I can understand them. After Gandolph passed me, there was this ENT (from Tolkiens trilogy) that stopped in the trail for a break. This was the water source for this shelter.