We left Bland after a full day of no hiking a zero day. It seemed a little tough getting back into the swing of it, even after taking only one day off. Our packs were heavy after a fresh resupply, it’s been a challenge to figure out the food situation on the trail. The tendency is to carry way too much food, only to reach the next resupply with a fair amount left over. It’s demoralizing to realize you carried all that weight, all that distance, for no reason. Slowly, I’m getting better at it. Hopefully we will continue to improve, to the point that our food bags are nearly empty when we arrive to town, it’s definitely a work in progress.

The hiking in this section was tough. The mountains are drier, water sources can be as far as seven or eight miles apart at times. This forces us to pay a lot more attention to how much water we must carry to get us to the next available source. Water is about the heaviest thing we have to carry, so we try our best not to bring too much. It’s a fine balance, five to eight extra pounds of water has a huge effect on how much effort you must exert as you hike. Running out of water for long stretches is even worse. Once you fall behind on hydration, it’s hard to catch back up if you continue to hike. The terrain has become a lot more rocky, foot placement requires a lot of concentration to avoid slipping or rolling an ankle. I know of one hiker who was stepping out of a shuttle after a ride back to the trail from town. He stepped out of the van onto a loose rock and rolled his ankle so bad he had to go to the hospital. After hiking all those miles he trashed his ankle stepping out of a vehicle. The one wrong step after so very many right ones.

We spent one night at the Weary Feet Hostel located right off the trail. We fished at a couple streams we encountered along the way, catching a couple small Brook trout and bream. The big Rainbow or Brookie we’re hoping for continues to evade us. We ate sautéed Chicken of the Woods mushrooms, and we were starting to find the first ripe wild strawberries and a few blueberries along the trail. There were lots of green berries everywhere, we looked forward to the time when many more ripen.

The weather has been unseasonably warm out here, as in most other parts of the country. We decided to try night hiking after the sun goes down, when temperatures get a little cooler. Night hiking is tricky, it requires constant attention to your footing, and the trail is a little harder to follow under the shine of a headlamp. You stumble a lot more at first it seems, but like anything, the more familiar you become with it, the easier it becomes. We see lots of deer at night, their eyes like glowing orbs in our headlamps. They seem less afraid at night, allowing us to pass closely as they stand and watch. We haven’t seen any bears at night yet, which is surprising to me, but we’re ever watchful. We carefully evaluate each set of glowing eyes we encounter. I’ve never really been scared of bears, but we definitely respect them and try to stay out of their way.

Night hiking presents a lot of time for reflection, the hours creep by with little talking between us, just long spans of time walking. The hours pass slowly, and the hiking pace is definitely slower. It lends itself to long stretches just spent pondering my life. I spent a long time thinking about Leslie Whitt. Excepting my own father, and my grandfather, “Les” Whitt was undoubtably the third greatest male influence in my life when I was a boy, and later in life when I became a man.

Robert Leslie “Les” Whitt came to Alexandria Louisiana in 1974 to become the curator of the Alexandria Zoo. I think he was 24 years old at that time. As a boy growing up in Alexandria, I loved, and was completely fascinated by animals of all kinds. I was especially interested in reptiles and amphibians.

Les always said, “when I came to the Alexandria Zoo all there was was a monkey on a stick, and the stick was broken.” Over the 34 years as curator, Les transformed the Alexandria Zoo into the greatest zoological attraction I have ever seen in a town the size of Alexandria, and that’s coming from a guy that has seen as many zoos as anyone. Even today I try to visit the zoos in the towns I pass through, and I have never seen another quite like the Alexandria Zoo in central Louisiana. Even today the culture of the zoo Les created still endures, long after Les’s passing back in 2008.

I first came to know Les because he was also an inactive member of the LDS church. I was enamored by Les, he was everything I wanted to be. At the time I dreamed that one day I would be a zookeeper like him. When Les came to Alexandria he was a 24 year old hippie with a vision. Alexandria Louisiana was not the most accepting town for people like Les in the seventies, an old southern agricultural town entrenched heavily in old south tradition and bias. In spite of those challenges of early acceptance, Les and his wife Lee Ann, became highly respected members of the Alexandria community. The zoo became an artistic reflection of Les’s vision, it was his masterpiece.

From the first day I met him, he immediately became my hero. My mother embraced Les and Lee Ann. She always fostered the interests of her children. For me that meant taking me to the zoo. She would often drop me off at the zoo during the summer and on Saturdays, and I would spend the days “helping” Les with whatever project he was working on. Les had the somewhat rare quality of being able to relate to young boys, even after he was much older. He never forgot what it was like to be a boy, as most men do when they grow up. He was always patient with me, took time to teach me, always let me help him, even when it would have probably been easier to do things himself. Les was a joker, he loved to pull little pranks at every opportunity. He was truly an amazing man. Because of Les, I had many opportunities to interact with many animals on a level that few kids my age were fortunate enough to be able to do. Les taught me how to behave and handle myself around big cats, bears, monkeys, birds, and exotic reptiles from all over the world. I treasure the memories of my experiences with Les.

Another aspect of my relationship with Les was with respect to the church. Les was the only adult church member I knew that was inactive. His perspective was different. I could talk to him about my own struggles with the church without fear of judgement, he understood. His words and advice provided me comfort, I knew I could tell him anything without judgement.

As I grew up and went off to college, I saw Les a lot less often. Les introduced me to Peter Lindsey at the Monroe Zoo. Peter was the reptile curator at the zoo. I spent many hours with Peter working with reptiles. Before the time of cell phones, other than the occasional visit to the zoo when I was home, Les and I talked very little. But we had that type of relationship where we could be absent from each other’s lives for even years at a time, and when we finally did get together it was like we had never been apart.

When my mother passed away on the 1st day of March in 2003 after a short battle with pancreatic cancer, I returned to Alexandria for the funeral and burial. I felt completely lost as I left the burial service at the cemetery that rainy Wednesday.

I was headed back to Lafayette from Alexandria that afternoon, and almost without thinking about it I drove straight to the zoo. I was very emotional when I walked up to the ticket window. Lee Ann was working and when I saw her face we both started crying. She came running around the counter and gave me a hug. “Les isn’t here”, she said. “He’s at home, he’s been very depressed and he hasn’t left the house in a couple weeks. He’s so sad about your Mama.”

While cleaning out a duck pond about five years prior, Les stepped on a piece of rusty wire that pierced his rubber boot and stuck deep in his foot. He developed a strep infection which lead to rheumatic fever, destroying the valves of his heart. Les was fortunate to receive a donor heart at a time when only a cardiac transplant would save his life. As is common in cardiac transplant patients, Les struggled with bouts of clinical depression after his transplant.

Lee Ann told me to sit down. “If there’s anything that will get Les off the couch it’s you John”, she said. “Let me call him.” She went back into the office, then came back and told me he was on his way.

Les drove up and parked, he jumped out of the car and ran up and gave me a big hug that almost lifted me off the ground. He squeezed me tight then turned away and said, “lets go take a ride on the golf cart, I want to show you some stuff.” His voice was thick with emotion.

We rode around and looked at exhibits he had either improved upon or created since I had last been there. “You remember Obadiah?” He asked. The last time I had seen the white bengal tiger he was a couple year old cub. We went around to the back of the tiger enclosure and pet Obadiah through the fence. The big cat rubbed his face and neck against our hands like a giant house cat as he purred loudly. It started raining harder so we got back into the golf cart and drove over to the reptile house.

We jumped out of the golf cart and ran under the overhang in front of the reptile house to get out of the rain. Les looked at the ground and said, “you know I’ve been so depressed about your Mama.” “I couldn’t even bring myself to come to her funeral today.” He brushed away tears that were welling up in the corners of his eyes. “When we first came to Alexandria it was a little hard to fit in, but your mother took us in and treated us like we were part of your family.” “I’ve never forgotten about that.” Les looked up at me and asked, “you been going to church?” I looked down and said, “no, not really, I mean I went today, but it’s been quite a while before that since I last went.” I looked back at him and asked, “what about you?” “Have you been going?” “Nah,” he said, toeing the dirt on the floor of the overhang with his rubber boot.

“What do you think is going to happen to guys like us when we die?” I asked him. “I haven’t been able to think of much else since I left Mama’s funeral today.” Les looked out at the rain that was falling steadily all around us. “You know right before my heart transplant I was really sick.” “I was in the cardiac ICU at Ochsner in New Orleans.” “I was on hemodialysis because my kidneys were failing, my liver was in shock, my lungs were full of fluid, it was really looking bad and they moved me to the top of the transplant list.” “The doctor came in and told me that the medicines supporting my heart weren’t working anymore.” “The doctor said they needed to sedate me and put me on the ventilator to support my breathing.” “He told me if they didn’t find a donor I probably only had about four or five more days.”

“Two days later they found a heart and it was a match.” “I was so sick, my liver enzymes were so high that I was in a coma for nines days after the surgery.” Les grabbed me in his arms and hugged me close. I could feel his tears dripping from his cheeks onto the back of my neck. I felt my own eyes swirl with tears. “During those nine days, I had a spiritual experience that was so powerful that even today it panics me inside to even mention it, I can’t even talk about it really.” Les pushed me back from his embrace and looked at me with tears streaming down his face. “But what I can tell you though is this.” “Guys like you, and guys like me, we’re gonna be alright.”

That was the last time I saw Les, he died in 2008 due to complications related to his transplant. The city of Alexandria held Les’s funeral at the convention center downtown on the banks of the Red River. There were thousands of people in attendance, Les touched the lives of many people through his work at the zoo and in the community. I drove to Alexandria for his funeral, I stood watching the slide show set up in the foyer. There was picture after picture of Les with every type of animal imaginable. I was proud to be in some of those slides with him.

Les loved BB King, Les was a musician himself, he played with BB King on several occasions. Les knew his end was near before he passed away, and he left specific instructions regarding his last wishes. Les’s casket was propped up so Les could look out over the Red River flowing by the convention center. Les had on a BB King ball cap, and a BB King backstage pass around his neck. His right hand gave a thumbs up, and he had the same half grin on his face that in life, was never very far away. May he rest in peace.

Solo and I came off the trail a couple miles outside of Bland VA in the evening of June 10th. Bland is the county seat of Bland County VA, with a population of 313 people as of the 2020 census. Bland is a scenic rural town nestled up in the mountains. There are not many resupply options in Bland, an IGA grocery store, a Dollar General, and a Circle K with a Dairy Queen attached. The dining room of Dairy Queen remains closed because of Covid concerns, but according to a local resident I was talking to, they’ve never had a case of Covid in Bland so far. We had a room at the only motel in Bland, the Big Walker Hotel. There’s not much going on in Bland, we thought it would be a good place to take a zero. I hadn’t taken a day off from hiking since Watauga Dam on May 28th so I was ready. My legs felt tired even in the mornings when I woke up for the past few days before, I knew I needed to let them rest and recuperate.

I wanted to write a little bit about Crazy Larry, who runs Crazy Larry’s Hostel in Damascus Virginia. When I arrived to Damascus I walked into a convenience store and bought some greasy fried chicken and a Dr. Pepper with ice in it. It was a treat to have a drink with ice in it. Spring water is cold up in the mountains, when we come to springs, we usually dump out any water we’re already carrying and refill our bottles with the cold water coming out of the mountainside. But it’s still not the same as actually having a cold drink with ice in it. It’s a luxury I’ve taken completely for granted for my entire life. I appreciated and savored it that day. I sat on the steps outside the store and watched the people come and go as I ate my fried chicken. I called Crazy Larry’s Hostel. My buddy Casey Duhon, who hiked 900 miles of the AT last year told me I shouldn’t miss staying at Crazy Larry’s if I was able to do it. Larry answered the phone and said he had a room available. He told me to come to his house and he would get me set up.

I walked about a half a mile to Crazy Larry’s, he was sitting on the porch and when I walked up he looked at me and asked, “you that Juanito character that called me?” I answered to the affirmative. “You want some coffee or a coke or something?” I walked up on the porch and told him I would take some black coffee if he had it. He stood up stiffly and limped into the house. Larry must be in his late sixties or maybe early seventies. He looks like what he is, the product of a very hard life. He came back out with an AT mug of steaming hot coffee. “Take off your pack and come sit down”, Larry said. I dropped my pack by the porch and sat down across a wooden table from him. He asked me where I was from, how the trail was treating me, all the usual questions. I asked him if he had hiked the trail and his eyes lit up a little.

Larry stared across the porch at the mountains across the road. “I spent most of my life in prison”, Larry said. “The little time when I wasn’t in prison, I was usually running from the law. I was just mad at the world, I thought I was a victim, I didn’t take credit for anything, I thought nothing was ever my fault. I grew up hard on the streets, I just took what I wanted, I fought a lot, I was always in trouble. I once stole a car that belonged to the TV evangelist Billy Graham’s daughter in North Carolina. Those folks in the Bible belt wanted to hang me for it. Billy Graham himself came to court for my hearing. The judge was going to sentence me to 10 years in prison, but Billy Graham stood up and told the judge to just give me probation. Give the man a chance he told the judge. The judge told Billy Graham that he didn’t understand. This man here has already had a whole bunch of chances Mr. Graham. Billy Graham said, “I don’t care, give him some more chances, give him probation.” The judge turned me loose with two years probation. After that I decided to walk the Appalachian Trail.”

“Like I said, I was mad at the world. I thought the world owed me something. I didn’t care what I had to do or who I had to go through, to get what I wanted. In 2006 I hiked the AT. The trail changed ALL that for me. I understood that I was the problem. I wanted things to be different. When I finished climbing Katadin, I came back here to Damascus to look for work. I liked the little town, and the way everybody was so kind to me, I had never had that in my life before. I met the lady that owns this old house and the building next door where the hostel is. They were both sitting empty. I convinced her to let me open Crazy Larry’s and the rest is history. I live in the house for free, and I run the hostel. She makes good money and I do okay too. Her kids told me I can live here until I die, even when I get too old to run the hostel anymore. Since I’ve been here I’ve been at peace for the first time in my life. I try to talk to the young people that pass through, I just hope maybe I can help some of them not make the same mistakes I did.” Crazy Larry ain’t crazy, he definitely has a PhD from the school of hard knocks, but he’s far from crazy. I ended up talking to Larry several more times that afternoon, he dropped some more “old dude wisdom” on me each time. Staying at Crazy Larry’s is a stop on the trail I won’t ever forget.

Solo and I headed out of Damascus the next day. We resupplied and ate lunch before we got back on the trail. The AT and the Virginia Creeper Trail share the same path out of Damascus for a while. The Virginia Creeper trail is a rails to trails project. These old railroad tracks converted into hiking and biking trails are becoming more and more popular. The walking was easy. As a result we missed the AT turn off from the Creeper trail and ended up hiking about two miles past it before we started missing seeing any white blazes. We stopped and looked at the AWOL guide and figured out where we went wrong. It’s pretty demoralizing to walk two miles in the wrong direction, but we sucked it up and walked the two miles back to the spot where the AT leaves the Virginia Creeper Trail and heads up the side of the mountain.

The AT, unlike the Virginia Creeper Trail, heads straight up the side of the mountain out of Damascus. We climbed for an hour straight before we finally reached the top.

Once we crossed the summit we descended into a bowl on the top of the mountain. The wind started blowing and the air felt colder. We heard thunder rumbling in the distance. “We’re about to get friggin hammered with rain”, I told Solo. “Think we ought to hurry up and pitch our tents so we don’t get soaked?” “Yeah, let’s do it, I can’t stand the thought of getting all our stuff wet right out of town”, Solo replied. We hurriedly found some flattish spots and set up our tents. I was just closing the zipper on my tent when the rain came pouring down in buckets. I blew up my mattress and got in my bag. We had only walked about five miles. The rain continued the rest of the day and through the night until about 4:00AM. We were still dry. We got up the next morning and hiked with dry gear and shoes, we vowed to set up tents to avoid rain more often. There’s little benefit to hiking in the rain when you can avoid it, in my opinion. All of your gear gets wet, your feet get wet, increasing the chance for blisters, the trail is wet, the rocks are slick and muddy, greatly increasing your chances of injuring yourself or worse. We used this technique several more times during this hike to avoid rain. If the storm was relatively short, we would just pack up and continue hiking. On one day we set up, the rain lasted an hour or so, then we packed up and hiked another eight miles in dry shoes.

We were excited to reach the 550 mile mark, it would mean we had completed one quarter of the trail. By then we had hiked enough altitude change to have climbed and descended Mount Everest two times.

The Hippies like to say hiking is a sport for what they call NARPs, an acronym for Non Athletic Regular People. By now most of the NARPs are gone. The people we still see on trail are in it to win it, There were a lot of heavy people on the trail during the early miles. Not anymore, they’ve either quit or lost a lot of weight. It’s amazing how much some people have changed, sometimes it’s hard to recognize them.

We stayed at the Quarter Way Inn near the trail after passing the quarter way mark. It was a really nice place, we were having trouble recovering enough during the night to feel fresh for hiking in the mornings, within an hour or two of hiking our legs would feel spent. We knew needed a zero but thought we would go a couple more days first. The owner of the Quarter Way Inn is a past thru hiker. Your room included laundry, shower, and breakfast in the mornings. It was super nice and the breakfast was awesome. She offered us an option to slack pack 20 miles the next day and stay at the Inn again the next night. She would drop us off 20 miles north of the Inn in the morning, we would hike south back to the Inn, and she would drop us off the following morning the same place, and we would continue north. Toward Bland.

It sounded like a good way to actively rest our legs by not carrying packs while we hiked. We agreed it was a good plan and decided to take her up on it. The next morning she took Solo and I, and another married couple to the road crossing 20 miles up the trail. We headed out, it felt goo to hike with no packs. We carried only one light day pack with snacks and water bottles and filters. We decided not to carry any water, we would just “camel up” at water sources and therefore keep our day pack light. We would just take turns carrying it and one of us or the other would hike with no pack at all.

It was a challenging hike, the terrain was steep and tough, even without packs. It was nice to not have a pack on, but the terrain still made it no picnic. We were beginning the last descent down toward the road that the Quarter Way Inn was located on when a big black bear sow ran across the trail in front of us. She stopped about 50 yards from us just as a cub ran up the side of a tree behind us. The cub had basically placed us between him and his mother by running up that tree. “Hey bear git outta here”, I hollered at the bear. She just stood there looking at us. “Start backing up slowly”, I told Solo. “We need to get from between her and the damn cub.” We backed up slowly always facing her. Two more cubs ran up two trees behind the sow so she had a big litter. Once we were about fifty yards back up the trail, the cubs came down from the trees and the four of them lumbered away. Solo hadn’t seen a bear before that, he had been complaining that everybody was seeing them except him. “You satisfied now bruh?”, I asked him chuckling. He laughed and said, “I was pretty scared there for a minute”, in his strong Maine accent. “Well, I guess I can damn sure say I’ve seen a bear now.” The rest of the hike back to the Inn was uneventful. We were pretty wiped out from the hike, but we were back probably an hour and a half before the other couple made it back.

On June 10th we hiked 15 miles into Bland Virginia. Our legs were weary when we arrived. We decided to zero on the 11th, we needed a day of no hiking and as little town walking as possible.

In an effort to get back up to date, I decided to do one post about the stretch between Erwin Tennessee and Damascus Virginia. I’ll probably continue to do this going forward, as it has become more and more challenging to keep my blog updated due to weather, lack of wi-fi, and just because I’m pretty exhausted most of the time. I looked forward to seeing Damascus outside of Trail Days. Damascus is a tiny hiker town, it boasts around 500 residents, give or take. The town’s economy is almost completely dependent on hikers from the AT and hikers and mountain bikers who run the Virginia Creeper Trail. I’ve heard more than 100,000 people come to do the Virginia Creeper Trail each year. Damascus is also an iconic town on the AT for day hikers, section hikers and especially thru hikers. There are lots of Hostels and two hiking outfitters in town.

Stubz and I headed out of Erwin toward Roan Mountain. We had some tough climbs ahead, and we hoped to do an average of about 10 miles per day give or take, of course depending on the terrain. Right out of town we had a 4000 foot ascent over a mile and a half stretch. It would probably take an hour and a half of walking up an incline that varied in steepness, from straight up to a gradual climb, but never flattened out. We stopped for a minute on the top to catch our breath and drink some water. “Dang it, I didn’t think we’d ever get to the top of this bastard,” I told Stubz between breaths. He just nodded as we both sucked in big gulps of air. Then Stubz said, “that sure sucked, and I think we have another one just like it in about 4 miles.” He was right, we sure did. Hikers like to call what we’re doing “type two fun”. Type two fun is fun that totally sucks while you’re doing it, but when you reach that summit, and stare into the vastness of these wild mountains, untainted by the exploits of man, it makes every step and every strain worth it. It’s type two fun.

The first two days of the hike were beautiful. The sun shined, it was warm but not hot. The trail was tough but not terrible. We did 23 miles those two days. The next morning it started raining again. It rained for an hour or so then quit. We just kept hiking, we were hoping to do 21 miles that day, ending up about 10 miles out of Roan Mountain Tennessee, where we would resupply, wash our clothes, shower, eat some real food.

We were about 12 miles into the hike, making good progress, when it started raining again, it never stopped till we arrived at the shelter that was packed with wet hikers. We found a couple pretty flat spots to camp and pitched our tents in the rain. It was miserable, type two fun.

The bigger problem was that for about the last eight miles of the hike I felt a blister forming on the ball of my right foot. Friction and wet socks and shoes are the recipe for blisters. I couldn’t stop and treat it, it was raining so hard nothing would have stayed on it. So I just kept going and finished the hike. I was limping pretty bad by the time we made it to the shelter.

When I got in my tent I tried to dry off my feet as best I could. I had a blister about the size of a quarter on the ball of my foot. It was a pretty deep blister, the skin covering it was thick. Maybe I’m very inflexible, but there was no way I could position my foot so that I could get a good look at it. It had a lot of blood tinged fluid in it, so I took my knife and made a slit in it to drain the fluid out. I couldn’t really see it, I just basically did it by feel. We were tired and wet so we cooked in our tents, hung our bear bags and went to bed. Hanging my bear bag I could barely put any pressure on my foot without it hurting exquisitely. It was supposed to rain all day the next day too. We had 10 miles to hike, including climbing Roan Mountain and the three Roan Mountain Balds before descending into town. Stubz was going to have to bandage my foot for me in the morning, I wasn’t looking forward to it.

The next morning it wasn’t raining yet, but it was very cloudy and there was thunder rumbling in the distance. Stubz bandaged my foot as I instructed him, and we set out. We hiked a few miles before the rain hit. Up till then my blister was painful but tolerable, once the rain started, the wet bandage started to slip, I went back to hiking three feet at a time, something I hadn’t had to do for quite a while. The rain pelted us, we passed the Roan Mountain High Shelter and didn’t even slow down, the wind was blowing thirty or forty miles an hour, it was pouring rain, lightening flashed and thunder clapped. We wanted off of the mountain. We climbed the balds in the same conditions, it was raining sideways, every step with my right foot brought stinging pain. Finally we crested the balds and began descending into the woods. The rain slowed down and eventually stopped. I limped down the several miles of switchbacks to the highway. We were about three miles from the town of Roan Mountain, but there was a hostel about a half mile up the road so we walked there.

We sat at a picnic table and drank Mountain Dew, it was the only thing not sold out of the coke machine We decided to stay at the Roan Mountain Bed and Breakfast, and found a trail angel Cindy that would come give us a ride. Cindy is a woman in her sixties, retired ER nurse, and widow. She is truly a trail angel, she spends her days giving hikers rides at no charge. She started after her husband died, she found herself never leaving her home, she decided to start helping hikers as a way to keep herself busy and fulfilled.

Cindy is part of the essence of the Appalachian Trail. She gave us several rides while in and around Roan Mountain. She never took payment, but she did let us take her to breakfast one morning at a local diner.

Roan Mountain Bed and Breakfast was awesome, we washed our clothes and wore loaner scrubs. Ann, the wife, took me to the pharmacy to get some stuff to bandage my foot with. Steve, the husband took us to resupply and dropped us off and picked us up for supper. I soaked my foot in Epsom salt and tried to stay off of it.

The next morning we bandaged my foot and I put on my shoe. It hurt to barely put any pressure on it, much less carry a thirty five pound pack on my back and hike on it. I told Stubz I couldn’t hike, he would have to go on without me. I was going to have to zero. Stubz said he was good with it, and we’d see each other up the trail. I worked on my blog, set up my wet tent in the yard to dry out, and generally just tried to let my foot rest. I hated having to waste a hiking day but I didn’t want the blister to turn into a bigger problem, like get infected. It was sunny that day but there was a lot more rain in the upcoming forecast. I hoped I would be able to hike the following day.

Late that afternoon I got a text from Solo. I hadn’t seen him since Trail Days, but I knew he was a little behind me. He had just arrived at the Mountain Harbor Hostel in Roan Mountain, and he wanted to know if I was interested in doing a 24 mile slack-pack the next day. I told him about my foot and I thought that may be a great way to put in some miles while I rested my foot. Slack-packing means you hike without your full pack, only a day pack with water, snacks, and rain gear. It’s amazing how much easier hiking is without a pack. Initially I said I wasn’t going to slack-pack. I thought I should do the whole trail pure, pass every single white blaze, with my full pack. Solo made the point that as long as you pass every single white blaze, who cares what you’re carrying on your back. I’m not sure I would have agreed so quickly if I hadn’t had the blister, but I agreed that day.

Cindy picked me up and we headed over to Mountain Harbor to pick up Solo. It had rained during the night and Solo’s tent and gear were drenched. He was in good spirits as usual anyway. A kid from Germany, they call him Sole-less because of some shoe incident, had decided to come with us. The way the slack-pack was going to work, was that Cindy was going to drop us off 24 miles north of Roan Mountain and we were going to hike back south, arriving back where we started. There was a bailout road that crossed the trail 10 miles from where we were starting, so if my foot got too bad I could bail at 10 miles and Cindy or Steve from the B&B would come pick me up. It wasn’t supposed to rain until late that evening, so we figured if we were lucky, we could finish before the rain started.

Solo and a group of other hikers at the hostel had cooked chicken and pork on the fire the night before. Apparently some of it was undercooked but they ate it anyway. About five miles into the hike Solo started complaining about his stomach hurting. We hit a shelter at about seven and a half miles and Solo laid down in the shelter with stomach cramps. I on the other hand, was doing pretty well. My foot definitely hurt, but it didn’t feel like it was getting any worse, so I was confident I could do the whole twenty-four.

When we reached the 10 mile road Solo sat down on a log and said he didn’t think he should risk trying to do the other 14. Once we started there was no quitting until we finished. Sole-less and I told him we were good with whatever he wanted to do, we could always come back tomorrow and do the 14. Solo said he thought that was best. We had no cell service to call Steve or Cindy so we walked up the road hoping to find a spot with a signal. After about a mile we came to a trailer house up on the hill with an old guy standing in the yard. We told him we would give him thirty bucks for a ride to Roan Mountain. He said he didn’t have a car but that his sister would probably give us a ride. His sister came out and instantly agreed. Solo and Sole-less jumped in the back of her Toyota pick-up and I rode up front with her. I wish I could remember her name. She was raised up there on the mountain, and had never been any further than Hot Springs North Carolina from her home. I stayed at the B&B again that night and some other hikers I knew showed up that evening as well. They caught up with me because of my zero. We did the 14 the next day, and the following day we hiked thirteen with full packs. My foot still hurt a lot, but Solo was an expert at dressing blisters after his time in Afghanistan. He was able to make it tolerable to hike on for most of the day.

Our next stop of interest was Shook Branch Recreation Area and Watauga Dam. We hiked down to the lake that Saturday afternoon. There were lots of people at the lake, it was prime pickings for hikers. “Hey are you guys thru hikers?”, people would ask. When we answered to the affirmative they would offer us burgers, drinks, fruit, all kinds of stuff. They wanted us to tell them about the hike. We obliged them. Hikers refer to what we were doing as “Yogi Bearing”. As it became dusk we hiked into the woods and found a stealth campsite to spend the night. No camping was permitted in the park around the lake, but we hiked out of the park into the nearby woods.

The next morning Sole-less said, “I think we should zero here, there will be all kinds of people at the lake, it being the Sunday before Memorial Day. We’ll eat like some kings I bet.” My foot was still pretty sore from hiking so I said I was fine with it if they wanted to stay, we would just need to do the 40 miles to Damascus in two and a half days starting on Memorial Day to make up for it. They said that would work so we went back to the park, and as predicted, ate like kings and met some really nice people. We camped on a point out on a peninsula that jutted out into the lake. We cowboy camped since the weather was nice and there weren’t many bugs. Cowboy camping is camping without your tent, just laying out your sleeping pad and bag and sleeping under the stars. We built a fire and it was a wonderful evening.

I woke up and began packing my stuff. The other two guys were slower to rise, so when I was packed up I told Solo I was heading out, I was sure they would catch up with me on trail, I was hiking slower to avoid putting too much pressure on my foot. I was hiking well, my foot was starting to feel better. I was about twelve miles into the hike, planning to stop at Iron Mountain Shelter which would be 14.4 miles for the day, when Solo texted me and asked if I had made it to Iron Mountain. I texted that I was a couple miles out. He texted that they hadn’t even gotten started yet, but they were planning to night hike and they would meet me there in the morning. I made it to the shelter, set up my tent, and talked to the hikers at the shelter. I had never met any of them before that night.

The next morning there was no sign of Solo or Sole-less, and I wasn’t really surprised. I had decided to hike to at least 20 miles that day, to make it to the Tennessee/Virginia border. At last I would be out of North Carolina and Tennessee, entering my fourth state of the fourteen I would pass through on this journey. I started early, my foot was feeling a little better. I hiked the first eight, stopped at a shelter and ate lunch then continued on. I came to a second shelter, about 10 miles outside of Damascus, and was tempted to stop for the night. It was a small shelter with few tent sites. There was already one hiker there who was sleeping in the shelter, and I had passed quite a few along the way that I suspected would stop there for the night. I decided to go at least to the border and find a campsite and only have about three or four miles left to hike to get into Damascus the next morning.

I hit the border around 7:00PM and dusk was starting to fall. The mountains were steep and there were no campsites near the border crossing. I hiked onward toward Damascus. About a mile further I say a flash of movement on the trail about 150 yards behind me. I thought it was another hiker and really didn’t pay any attention for a few minutes. I eventually glanced back and there was a three hundred pound or so bear following me down the trail about 150 yards back. I stopped and he stopped and just stared at me. I said, “hey bear, git out of here.” He just stood there looking at me, so I turned around and just started walking down the trail again. He kept following me for probably two and a half miles. I stopped a few times and he stopped each time too, only to resume following me when I started walking again. Eventually I guess he lost interest, he disappeared from the trail and I found a campsite right as darkness fell, a couple of the people I had met the night before were camped there. I set up my tent, ate a peanut butter and honey burrito and drank a liter of water. I had hiked twenty four miles, the furtherest I have traveled on foot in one go since I ran my last marathon. Sleep came fast that night.

I had wondered what it would feel like to hike twenty plus miles in a day. I knew that if you walked carrying a pack in the mountains for 20 plus miles it would have take about as much, if not more, effort than running a marathon. I knew how running a marathon felt, I was also curious how you would feel the next morning after hiking that far too. I did notice a few key differences. The first is that there’s no shower, or tub to soak in after you finish hiking, like there usually is when you finish running a marathon. You also don’t usually sleep in the clothes you ran the marathon in that night like you do when your long distance hiking. Other than that it feels about the same.

June 1st I hiked the easy downhill miles into Damascus. The trail runs right through the middle of town. I went to a Convenience Store and ate some fried chicken and drank a Dr. Pepper. Then I went to Crazy Larry’s hostel and got a room. It is the nicest hostel I’ve been to. It was clean and comfortable. I spent an hour listening to Crazy Larry tell me his story, it’s worth hearing so I’ll tell a little about Larry in my next entry. Solo arrived in Damascus later that afternoon, He must have hiked 30 miles that day to catch up with me. Sole-less didn’t catch up till the next morning. He was covered in poison oak, we knew he wouldn’t be joining us the following day. I guess they don’t have poison oak in Germany, he didn’t even know what it was.

Stubz and I expected a pretty nice hike that day. We had one pretty hard climb in the morning, then mostly downhill to the town of Erwin Tennessee. We decided to head to the Budget Inn in town rather than stay at the hostel along the trail. We would have to hitch once we got on the road, the town was being nearly 4 miles off the trail.

We stopped at the hostel and bought a coke to drink while we rested under the porch. We saw a few hikers we knew that were staying there and a few just arriving after us from the trail. We talked to a few people then started down the road toward town.

We hadn’t been hitching long when a lady stopped and asked us where we were going. We told her the budget motel in town. She said she was going part of the way if we wanted a ride, we took it of course, worse case it shortened the distance we had to walk. She dropped us off in a parking lot, and a man and his wife pulled in in front of us. The man got out and opened his trunk and stood waiting for us to walk up. “Y’all thru-hikers?”, he asked. “Yessir we are”, I responded. “Y’all throw your packs in the trunk and we’ll take you wherever you’re going.” We threw them in the trunk and he brought us straight to the motel. He also pointed out a couple places to eat that weren’t too far of a walk from the place we were staying. It never ceased to amaze me how good the people along the trail were to us.

We resupplied our food and washed our clothes. We ate at a Mexican restaurant about a mile from the hotel then walked back and called it a night.

We left Hogback Ridge Shelter around 8:00 in the morning. It was misty but not raining, the sun was supposed to come out mid morning and shine the rest of the day. We decided to head to Whistling Gap Campsite. It was about thirteen and a half miles leaving another thirteen and a half to get to Erwin Tennessee. There was supposed to be a pretty good water source at the campsite, making it an ideal spot to stop.

Dundee kinda wanted to push a little further, he wanted to get into Erwin as early as possible, he had some business back home to take care of. I was pretty firm that I wasn’t going any further than the campsite, I wasn’t rushing to get to Erwin. I told Dundee and Stubz to do what ever they wanted. Hike your own hike dude, I’ll run into you down the trail. I had no problem with hiking alone for a while, I sorta looked forward to it.

We arrived at the campsite and found it to have a goos water source and some nice flat campsites. I took off my pack and started taking off my hiking shoes so I could put on my camp shoes. Dundee was still standing there with his pack on. He said he was going a couple more miles. I said that was cool and I would probably see him in town tomorrow sometime. Dundee then looked at Stubz, who said, “hey man I think I’m just going to hang back with Juanito, it’s a good campsite and I’m ready to stop too.” Dundee sorta shrugged then headed on down the trail. It would be the first night since they started the trail that Stubz and Dundee hadn’t camped together

It seemed kinda weird that our group was breaking up, 5.0 had left the trail, Dundee just split off, we were at least a day ahead or a day behind most of the people we knew. There was a couple we knew that showed up to the campsite, Potato and Brandy. And there were a few other hikers we didn’t know that showed up later in the evening. We went to bed around nine, “hiker midnight” as it’s called on the trail. The thru hikers respect hiker midnight, no more loud talking, fires are put out, everybody pretty much goes to their tent.

Around 10:30 three other hikers we knew showed u to the campsite and shined headlights everywhere looking for flat places to pitch their tents. After about 30 minutes of commotion they settled down too and the woods were quiet again once more.

The three of us hiked together loosely again that day. We agreed to meet at Hogback Ridge Shelter that evening. The weather was good that day, and the trail was not too strenuous. It was a good day for a longer hike.

We arrived at Hogback Ridge around 5:30 that afternoon. There was a poem about Roan Mountain typed on a scrap of paper at the shelter. I took a picture so I could share it here. Roan Mountain was ahead of us, It’s namesake town Roan Mountain, would be the next resupply town past Erwin Tennessee.

The Roan in Rime

When cabin fever makes me moan,

I free my mind to tramp the Roan.

I hike a daybreak mountain climb

And roam it’s paths encloaked in rime

Unveiled from night’s obscurity

I’m awed with such wild purity

Rime swaddles mountaintops in white

Wen fog engulfs a wintry night.

As droplet imps in escapade

Caress each fence-row, branch and blade,

Their fairy kiss and snug embrace

Leave diamond sparkles every place.

Such thoughts, recalling icy morns

Of mountain heights where frost adorns

The artistry of fog and night

With gleaming flecks of brilliant light,

Grant scenes of God-breathed poetry

And Rime inspired rhapsody.

The Blazer was ready by 9:30. Zach ultimately bought four new tires. During that time I mailed home my heavier Hilleberg tent. It weighed in at 6.1 pounds with the amount of moisture it was holding. I looked forward to losing about five pounds of my pack weight. My pack definitely seemed lighter, even with a four day food resupply and a liter of water.

When we arrived at the trailhead 5.0 announced that he was getting off trail, going home with Zach to Richmond Virginia. I wasn’t shocked, I figured it was coming. I had talked to him about it while we were hiking together the day before we left for Trail Days. He told me he needed to work, needed to do something with himself, at least for a while. I encouraged him to finish the trail, at 25 years old he had plenty of time to work the rest of his life. He told me he had to get off, but he planned to come back and finish the trail. I told him he had to do what was best for him, and that was something only he could decide. That left Dundee, Stubz, and I. Normally Dundee and Stubz hiked together, and 5.0 and I had been hiking together for a time. The three of us agreed to meet up at Jerry Cabin Shelter and camp there together.

The climb out of Allen Gap was steep and tough. We ascended 4000 feet in the first two miles. After we were up on top the hiking was good, none of the climbs were too bad, and none of the descents too steep. There wasn’t as much water along the trail in these mountains, fewer springs were running, I don’t think I saw a single stream the whole 12 miles.

We arrived at the shelter, probably all within an hour of each other. We sat around the fire pit and cooked dinner. “If 5.0 was here we’d have a fire right now,” somebody said. It was true. Every day when 5.0 arrived at camp he would collect a 6 liter bag of water for everyone to use, then he would gather firewood. He started a fire every night.When he first started he trail he didn’t know how to build a fire, but once I taught him he did it every night. After a while he was probably the best fire builder in camp. We missed his presence in camp that night.

When we decided to go to Trail Days, we didn’t want to waste too much time with it. Our plan was to arrive early Friday afternoon, see all the equipment booths, wash our clothes, take a shower, camp in tent city Friday night, drink a lot of beer, wake up and eat a good breakfast Saturday morning, and be back on trail by Saturday afternoon around 1:00 or 2:00 at the latest. It was a great plan. Of course it didn’t work out that way.

Right off the bat we had gotten there way to late on Friday night for the gear booths, showers, or laundry. All our gear was wet, but we walked around and met up with lots of other hikers we hadn’t seen in a while. I saw Hot Sauce, a guy me and Shelby met on the approach trail on day one. The day we met him he told us he had just finished hiking the Florida Trail, and that he was planning to do 25 miles that first day. I figured I would never see him again. Turns out he was less than 50 miles further down the trail than I was at this point. Funny how the trail works and where it takes you.

We decided we would go ahead and stay Saturday and get all our chores done, see the booths, and plan to get back on trail Sunday morning. I bought that new Hyperlite Mountain gear tent. I was going to have to carry both tents for a couple of days until I could send the Hilleberg home. The Post Office was closed until Monday so I had no choice but to carry both for a few days. We just hung out, ate a lot, and visited with the other hikers and the local people. There were lots of people at Trail Days that weren’t hikers too, they had a lot of questions for us about the trail. The sun came out and dried our tents, packs, and sleeping bags, It was a great relaxing day.

Sunday morning we woke up and got out of town. We were headed back to Allen Gap after stopping to grab some Subway sandwiches to put in our packs for lunch. The drive was about two and a half hours to get back to Allen Gap. Everything was going well.

About forty-five minutes from Allen Gap we had a second blowout, it was the spare this time, the same wheel as the first blowout. The road was climbing up the mountainside when it happened, but fortunately there was a gravel road right ahead so we were able to pull off. We didn’t have another spare, both tires were completely destroyed.We didn’t know where we even were.

After a few minutes we heard an ATV heading up the gravel road toward us. A young couple on a four-wheeler drove up and asked us if we were okay. We told them we were hikers, trying to get back to the AT about forty-five minutes away. They were country people, they had lived there all their lives and had never even heard of the Appalachian Trail. They couldn’t believe we had walked there all the way from Georgia. I don’t think they even believed us at first. We asked them where the closest town was located. They said Weaverville North Carolina was the closest, about twenty-five miles away. They said there was a towing service there that could probably get us to the tire shop, which opened in the morning. We called and an older gentleman answered the phone. He said to give him thirty minutes and he’d get someone there to pick us up.

The same man that answered the phone showed up with a flatbed truck and loaded up the Blazer. All the other guys road in the Blazer and I jumped in the cab of the tow truck. He was a really nice guy, I wish I could remember his name. He was 78 years old and still running his own towing service. He brought us to the Budget Motel then he and Zach took the Blazer to the tire shop. We walked a mile to a Barbecue joint and ate, and I noticed a Pack and Ship store a few store fronts down. I decided to go there the next morning and send the Hilleberg tent home. Things were looking up.

We woke up with the sun that Saturday morning. There were booths and big trailers parked everywhere. Churches from all around the surrounding area come to Trail Days to take care of the hikers. They had semi trailers filled with washers and dryers, they gave you loaner clothes to wear while they washed yours for you. They constantly tried to feed you, they had trailers full of showers with plenty of hot water. Their generosity was sincere and unconditional. Everyone there treated us like we were celebrities, they wanted to know where we came from, what our trail names where, and how far we had come on the trail. There was even one church that had a line of chairs and wash basins. The church members would kneel and wash your feet if you would let them. I know it’s a biblical thing, I understood the symbolic significance, but I just couldn’t bring myself to let someone else wash my feet for me, no matter how dirty my feet were. The Bible Belt is alive and well in southern Appalachia.

There’s no doubt people from every walk of life come to hike the trail each year. People come from all over the world, but mostly it’s just Hippies. I grew up in rural Louisiana, I grew up believing Hippies were bad people. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. I’ve found them to be the kindest, most nonjudgmental people on the on the earth. I discovered that I have a lot of Hippie in me. The word Hippie was first used in the mid 1960’s to describe a movement of people that rejected the mores of society, that favored communal living, and believed that acceptance was a better path than judging others based on your own frame of reference.

Trail Days is basically a massive Hippie party. If you’ve never been to one it’s something worth attending. There was a hiker talent show. It’s not a talent contest, it’s a talent show. There were singers from every genre including opera, country, folk, blue grass, and rock and roll. There were jugglers, poets, fire eaters, comedians, basically anything you could think of. Everyone doing their own thing and seeing and appreciating the things that others have mastered. It was awesome to behold. There was no trouble, there was no violence, just people applauding others as they displayed mastery of their individual crafts. I’m not saying all of it was good, or that some of the poetry didn’t run long, but overall it was awesome to behold.

There is a hiker parade, it’s AT tradition for male thru hikers to find dresses at the local Goodwill stores to wear for the parade. This year was no exception. I didn’t wear a dress, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching the hikers I have come to know that did.

We looked at all the newest hiker gear on the market, ultralight gear, like most technology today, has risen to a level that is hard to comprehend.

Initially, when I started my hike, I really liked my German made Hilleberg tent. I told myself it was worth the weight to be a little heavy, because it was such a comfortable space. It was worth it to be comfortable, I slept in it most nights. But then I discovered Hyperlight gear. A tent that used trekking poles instead of tent poles, that was easier to set up and take down, and best of all it only weighed 16 ounces. When I mailed my sodden Hilleberg home, the postal scale showed it weighed 6.1 pounds. Just like that I dropped 5 pounds of weight from my pack, and I found it to be just as comfortable to sleep in, an more importantly just as comfortable and dry to shelter in during the relentless rain.

It reminded me of what Gandalf told me once while we were sitting in a shelter waiting for the rain to stop, so we could get out of the Smokies. He looked at my pack and said, “damn son how much does that pack weigh?’ I told him I figured it weighed about 35 pounds with four days of food and a liter and a half of water. He looked at his own pack and said, “mine weighs 23 pounds with four days food and a liter of water.” He cocked his head sideways, looked at me, and said”, you know the difference between your pack and mine?” I said, “what’s that?” He said, “you’ve got a bunch of stuff in yours that you want. I’ve only got what I need in mine.” I’d never thought of it that way, but I began to after that. I started looking for things I could do without. I threw my wool sleeping socks in a hiker box. Surely winter was over by now, why should I need to carry this extra base layer now that we’re out of the Smokies? Everybody says that once you get out of the Smokies you don’t need your cold weather gear anymore. I threw my base layer shirt in a hiker box and mailed the leggings home with the Hilleberg. It didn’t change the weight much but at least it felt a little lighter. I hoped I wouldn’t regret it if a cold front came through, you never can tell at higher elevation what’s going to hapen. Once it gets later in the summer, I figure I’ll only carry the set of clothes I have on my back.

We had a short hike to Allen Gap that morning. We messed around camp because we weren’t in a hurry, it was cold so we built a fire. We ate breakfast and packed up our tents once the sun dried up the dew.

W were headed to Trail Days in Damascus Virginia. 5.0 had a buddy that lived in Richmond who was going to pick us up at Allen Gap and drive us the two hours to Trail Days. We were excited to get there. Trail Days is a festival held in the little town of Damascus. It is the festival on the trail to celebrate the thru hikers of that year. All the best cottage gear companies would be there. I really didn’t know much about it, only that it was a celebration of AT hikers, and that they offered showers, clothes washing, free meals and other trail magic at every turn. There was a tent city behind the baseball fields where hundreds of hikers would set up their tents. Hikers all along the trail would get shuttles, rent cars, hitchhike, or walk into Damascus for a three day hiking celebration.

5.0, Dundee, Stubz, and I hiked down to Allen Gap pretty quickly, it was mostly downhill and the descents weren’t too bad. 5.0’s buddy Zach was supposed to get there around 2:00PM, we made it down around 12:30PM. There was a pull-off by the trail so we sat around eating lunch from our food bags. The skies were clouding up, the weather can change quickly and without warning up in the mountains. Two other groups of hikers came out of the woods and waited by the pull-off for their own rides. We knew two of the other hikers, an older lady from Russia named Blue, and her similarly aged hiking buddy from California, Geisha Girl. They were being picked up by a friend from Ashton NC, they weren’t going to trail days. Blue said in her strong Russian accent that they were too old for all that “Trail Days” nonsense.

The group we didn’t know were picked up quickly, probably fifteen minutes after they arrived at the gap. We chatted with Blue and Geisha Girl, and then of course it started raining. Their ride showed up about an hour later, the rain continued to fall, and we were getting soaked.

By 4;30PM there was still no Zach. We were all out of water, we didn’t have much food because we hadn’t wanted to carry a lot if we were going to the festival. We decided to walk the .2 miles down the road to a stream noted on the Far Out app as a good water source. We had tried to avoid walking the extra .2 initially, hikers begin to avoid any extra walking they can. But we were getting thirsty and were starting to wonder if something has happened, maybe Zach was lost, maybe he had car trouble, maybe he changed his mind and wasn’t coming after all. We weren’t really worried, we were still on the trail, and there was a shelter only 4.8 miles up the trail after you passed Allen Gap, if nothing else, we could always head there and camp for the night. That’s a great thing about hiking, you can always camp wherever you end up.

We hid our packs in the woods and walked the .2 down to the stream. The rain continued, it wasn’t raining hard, it was just raining steady, and we were getting wetter and wetter. There was very little traffic on the mountain road. When we made it to the stream it was a steep rocky climb down to get to the water’s edge. We were all squatting down filling our dirty water bottles so we could filter the water into our clean water bottles. The water was ice cold. The taste of fresh filtered water from mountain streams or springs is the best tasting water you will ever drink. The taste of town water is hard to take after drinking the cold water in the mountains. We were heading back up the rocky bank back up to the road and a guy came out on his porch across the road from the stream. He started yelling at us that we were trespassing on private property, and that if we didn’t get off his land he was calling the law on us.

I walked out into the middle of the road and said, “hey man, we’re sorry, we were only trying to get a drink of water, we’re just thirsty and we did’t know it was private property.” He stood there looking at me for a minute and his face softened. “Y’all come on over here and get on this porch out of the damn rain, I’m Dalton.”

“I bet y’all are hungry too”, he said. Let me go in here and see if I can find y’all something to eat.” He went inside and came back with a half empty two liter bottle of A&W Root Beer. He handed it to me and said, “this is all I have offer to drink, y’all can just pass it around I reckon.” “I put a frozen pizza in the oven for y’all, it takes about 15 minutes to cook.” It was obvious he had very little, I told him we would be okay, he didn’t need to cook us anything, hell we were just glad to get out of the rain for a minute.

He wouldn’t hear of it though, he told us to sit down and wait for the pizza to get ready. By now it was getting close to 6:00PM, the rain had slowed down but continued to fall lightly. Dalton had a land line, we had no cell service, and therefore no way to get in contact with Zach before. 5.0 called Zach from the land line and luckily Zach had service. He was 20 or 30 minutes out, we were headed to Trail Days after all. We ate the pizza and ran back to the trailhead to retrieve our packs, then we walked back to Dalton’s house to wait for Zach.

Zach showed up around 7:00PM and we piled into his old beat up Blazer. Zach was a tall thin black guy, by tall I mean 6’.6”. He was a super nice guy, he had run into all kinds of trouble finding us, he had a blowout on his front passenger side tire, and he had been lost for quite a while until 5.0 finally got him on the phone.

We arrived in Damascus well after 9:00, set our tents up in the massive tent camp behind the ballpark. The party was in full swing. We saw lots of people from the trail we had not seen in a while. We eventually made it back to our tents and crawled into our damp sleeping bags. We looked forward to showers and dry clothes in the morning.