3/24/01
I woke up this morning at 5:30 a.m. to the sound of Creeper packing up his tent. Apparently he was having trouble sleeping so he decided to pack up. After watching a beautiful sunrise at Addis Gap where we had spent the night, Creeper started down the trail at 6:30 a.m. followed by me at 7:00 a.m. The early climb over Kelly Knob was steep and long. We arrived at Dick's Creek Gap by 9:30 and crossed the highway in search of water from the creek. The water source was poor, but some weekend hikers at the parking lot were kind enough to share some water and gatorade which was much appreciated. After another steep ascent, we stopped to resupply our water. "Heavy" from Mass. caught up to us and we caught up on trail news and hiked together for a couple of miles.
By lunch time, we had hiked to Plum Orchard Gap shelter. We decided to eat there (nice triple-decker shelter!) and did so. As we were eating, a rain shower began. We debated for over an hour whether or not to stay at the shelter out of the rain or try to move forward and make up some miles (remember, we're still a day behind thanks to Tuesday's snowstorm). We finally decided to hike on and got started around 2 p.m. Not long after we started, the showers came again and it rained the rest of the way to our destination tonight. We are now in North Carolina! We made it to the campsite just before Bly Gap, and I am tenting about 400 yards inside the NC border. I arrived first to the camp and hastily put up the tent and crawled inside as I was wet and cold from the rain. After drying out and putting on some dry warm clothes, I cooked dinner from within the vestibule of the tent. Finally, it stopped raining around 6:30 this evening, but we are still damp and need to dry things out tomorrow.
I am very frustrated right now with the blisters on my right heel as they aren't getting any better and we have really difficult uphill days ahead of us. I treated the blisters with Neosporin and re-wrapped them well, hopefully I'll be able to keep moving forward without further foot problems. We're still a day behind and really pushing to catch up so we can get to Wesser by next weekend so Paula and I can celebrate our anniversary and I can rest my feet for longer than a day. Today's statistics: low mid 30's, high 50 degrees, rainy afternoon. Mileage for the day: 13.9, cumulative mileage 75.4.
