It's amazing how quickly fortunes and moods can change out here. My mood will vary from minute to minute depending on the terrain sometimes or hour to hour depending on whether I'm eating enough or day to day depending on weather, people, or I don't know what.
The day before yesterday was one of the hardest I've had on the trail. It had been raining off and on for several days, the trail was rough, I hadn't eaten enough, and I had kinda been ditched (not really, but I was hiking alone) by the people I had been hiking with for a while, and I had lost my headlamp. But, the weather cleared off, I got a ride into town, had a great AYCE meal, met the people I had been chasing all day, and got a good dry place for the night. The next day, I had an easy hike over good terrain, saw several people I hadn't seen in a while, picked up two hitches real easily, found the guy with my headlamp, helped return a tent to a hiking buddy I had passed on the trail, and he bought me a burger and a coke. (Wish I had time to flesh this out better and more clearly)
The weather was beautiful, and the views were great from Mckafee Knob and Tinker Cliffs. I tried to cowboy camp (camp without setting up tent or getting in a shelter) on the top of the cliffs and watch the sunrise to cap off a wonderful day, but then a storm rolled in at 3:00 in the morning last night, and I had to pack up and race down to a shelter crowded with Boy Scouts, cram into a spot, only to have a leak spring right above my head and drip on my sleeping bag. Then the scouts got up at 5:30 in the morning and made noise until they left around 8:30. But they made up for it by giving me beef jerkey, pop tarts, oreos, and some trail food, and the scout leader was very friendly. And today I had a really nice 9 mile stroll into town, had some good conversation along the way, and there was cold beer sitting at the trail head. And since then, I've been eating pizza and ice cream, drinking beer, and sitting in the sun by the pool with some guys I've been hiking with for the past few days. Sometimes, life is good.
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Cold beer, ice cream and pizza by the pool? If that wasn't preceded by the phrase "9 mile stroll" I'd swear you were writing about spring break.
ReplyDeleteAnd when it rains, here's some advice to stick with from the musical theater community: The sun will come out tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, they'll be sun.
You have permission to throw stuff at me. Like a badger.
Funny that this was titled Roller Coasters and we just went over the VA Roller Coaster -- so I figured that's what you were writing about. Maybe we'll get to hear about last night's breakdown on the blog, or maybe you made it DC after all. Keep on keeping on. My e-mail's dgemmer@gmail.com, if you ever want to hit me up
ReplyDeleteThat comment was from Fidget, btw
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