Run town run

Well I tried twice last night to post, and after writing for an hour, I tried to publish my post, but it never showed. So this is the quick version.

A horrible bird, the whipperwill woke me up at 5:20 as predicted by many waters. Same spot to, on the table in front of the shelter in which I fitfully slept. MW has been here before I guess. My other shelter mate just rolled over and went back to sleep. I slept horribly last night, probably a result of the heat, and a blister forming under a callous on my left heal. I couldn't sleep on my back and stretch out as a result.

Normallybirds wake me at 5:50, then I lay there until six, when my watch alarm goes off. The alarm signals me to take my NoDoz caffeine pill, 200 mg of wonderful happiness. According to the package they're, "safe as coffee." I'll take one then fall back to sleep for twenty minutes. After twenty minutes the drug takes effect and I come flying into the world like David Lee Roth, ready to party throughout the day. How can any one waste time and effort on coffee out here, when you can get the caffeine you need in a pill?

Many Water's is also packing early to leave and we hang out a few minutes. He says it's fifteen switchbacks, and1800 feet to the top of the climb in front of me. I fly up the hill, then descend and start heading up the next climb, Bluff mountain, 3372 feet. Steps from the summit there us a plaque honoring, "The exact spot where little Ottie Cline's body was found." In 1881 Ottie was a month shy of five years old when he wandered from a schoolhouse seven miles away on a November day. He climbed well beyond the logical search area and died alone in the cold forest on a mountain top.

I hustle through the miles, Chinese buffet on my mind in Buena Vista, Va. There is no one out here today, just the squirrels and I.

I pass through evidence of former habitation along Brown mountain creek. This was a sharecroppers community according to an interpretive sign. Barely seen through the thick forest lies the evidence in the form of a few stone walls, slowly being returnind back to the forest. The sharecroppers were freed slaves who paid half of their crop to their landlord in exchange for the right to farm. If the farmer owned his own stock team he paid only a quarter of the crop. The mill located in this valley charged an eight of the crop. After considering these figures, it is hard to see how this differed from slavery.

Soon I'm at US 60, a much lonely road today then US 50. There is very little traffic, but thankfully a trail angel left two gallons of water and a bag of fruit and Rice Crisp treats. It takes nearly two hours to get a ride. A pickup passes then turns around and gets me. The driver tells me to be careful of the blood in back, he killed a ground hog in his yard this morning and somehow the blood made it to the truck.

Yes after two hours I accept a ride in the back of a bloody truck with hill jacks at the wheel. Riding in the back of pickups is a lot of fun, made more so on a near ten mile ride of windy mountain roads, with a southern mountain man at the wheel. They drop me at the Budget Inn, I don't want to head back to the trail now it is already almost six. Plus I need to take more showers to win the battle against all my heat rash getting infected. Some of the heat rash bumps are white and when I pinch them a little puss oozes out. A good reason to bathe.

After getting a room I head to the Canton restaurant. This town, a typical Appalachian trail town is surrounded by pointed thousand foot mountains. Pre civil war era homes are seen on the poking through trees, and false front buildings on Main street are probably post civil war construction.

The Chinese buffet is closesed for two months, so I head to Don Tequila's across the street. I expect that it will fail as far as Mexican food goes, but when I enter and see only smiling Latino waiting the tables and cooking, I know it will be great. True enough, it was the best meal of the trail. My dinner filled two plates.

After that I wrote this entry twice, each time taking an hour I could have done something else. Each time the post was lost. Now I learned to publish a little at a time, then edit and add more to the post. So as I'm writing my readers will see partial posts.

Happy fathers day!