June 5 - Iron Mountain Shelter to Abington Gap Shelter

16 miles today! The last couple days we have slacked off, time to get back to business! :D

Passed by a grave this morning. Stated "Uncle Nick - Lived alone, suffered alone, died alone". What a happy note to start the day on...

Hiked through a pasture and saw a calf! So cute! There were no other cows around though so it must have gotten lost or something. :(

We were very tempted to hike an extra 10 miles straight into Damascus, especially if there was no room in the tiny 5 man shelter. I would have followed Will into town, but luckily I didn't have to, there were two spots left in the shelter. (I'm lazy)

As we were going to sleep I realized I had a trail name. Because of my grace yesterday, I am now 'Head First'. Haha

June 4 - Watauga Lake Shelter to Iron Mountain Shelter

Got on the trail before 8! Woot! (Only by like 5 minutes haha)

So somehow I tripped and went head first into the ground. It didn't hurt or anything, but I was trapped under my backpack for a few minutes. In my attempt to get up, I flopped around like a fish out of water until I was able to unbuckle the hip belt on my pack. Silly Will didn't take a picture, for some reason he was more worried about if I was okay. What's up with that?

Other than that, it was not an eventful day but we did learn during dinner that the shelter we stopped at for lunch was the location of an axe murder in the 70s. Ooo! Scary!

Psst. . . This is Mary's mom!

Don't know if I will do this correctly, but I will give it a try. We have had a lot of people asking about Mary and Will lately, so I thought I would update. (Sorry, Mary, but you had your chance at the hostel! Lol!)

Mary and Will made it to Virginia on Thursday sometime, crossing Tennessee off their list of states. Three down, eleven to go, with Virginia being the state with the most miles, with well over 500. They spent two nights in Damascus and are back to hiking now. We haven't talked on the phone since last weekend, though. They didn't have a cell phone signal on Saturday night because their check-in message came via their satellite connection with a short, 'Done for the day' message. Therefore, I bet  we may not get any blog updates for a while.

I am guessing that they went around 15 miles today, taking their total up to 482.7 miles! They are more than 20% complete!

If you are local and are wondering how far they have gone, drive by our home where we have some signs in the front windows keeping track of their progress.

We plan to visit the kids soon and I am soooo looking forward to that. They have been texting me lists of items they would like us to bring. Mary has two things tied for first place, I believe--her dog and some homemade macaroni and cheese!

I have two requests of you. First, this mom is asking for continued prayers for her children. The bad weather we are scheduled to receive Sunday/Monday will be heading their way. Secondly, I know it is a pain sometimes to leave comments, but if you could just leave a quick 'Hello, Mary and Will' with your name included, maybe she will really realize more than Mom, Deb, and Kathy are reading! Haha! I just checked... There are over 6,000 views of her blog! While I pull this up a lot, I haven't come here THAT much!

One last thing I want to mention... I just love when my kids call home. While you can tell it through some of her posts here, hearing Mary and Will's voices so very, very excited when they are sharing their experiences is quite wonderful. I don't know if I have ever heard such truly excited joy in both of their voices this much. They, so far, are loving this time they are hiking together and our phone calls are just filled with laughter.

Mary, I apologize for hijacking your blog. Just think of me as a guest blogger, filling in. I love you, sweetheart. See you soon!

June 3 - Hampton, TN to Wasuaga Lake Shelter

The laundromat was closed yesterday so we were not able to leave early this morning. It didn't open until 10 - Yay we get to sleep in! This laundromat is so weird. Its a computer resale, internet cafe, has mini arcade and pool tables, landry, and it sells burgers and hotdogs. The most random combination of things. Atleast it was a good cheese burger.

The hostel was very nice. We mostly had the floor all to ourselves, and that's saying something cause that place is huge!

We didn't end up getting on the trail until 2 o'clock, but we only had about 8 and a half miles. We had one big climb and the last 2 miles was spend walking around a lake.

Tomorrow is either a 14 mile or a 22 mile day. We will see what happens.

June 2 - Laurel Fork Shelter to Hampton, TN

Up and on the trail by 7! Town food seems to be a good motivator. Hiked a mile down the AT and then a mile down a side trail to town. Of course the side trail was not marked properly and instead of taking the right fork in the trail that went around a mud pit, we took the left ended up having to go strait through it. I fell down. Oh well, it's part of it.

We are staying in the Braemar Castle Hostel tonight. It's nice. And the owner has an adorable puppy that looks like a wolf! So cute!

So due to the fact that the only restaurants are on the other side of town, what was supposed to be a short mileage day probably ended up being around 8 miles. Haha. And there are no sidewalks in this town.

June 1 - Mountaineer Shelter to Laurel Fork Shelter

The renewed Do-Re-Mi in the trail journal is hilarious! Quite clever!

Yes, that is a bench on the trail. No we are nowhere near a road. Haha

Today wasn't hard climbing wise, but it was long, 18 miles.

The last bit of trail to the falls started off great, wide and flat because it is a popular trail. Then it turned into a big rock pile. Literally. It took me forever to get to the bottom of it. Laurel Falls was gorgeous though!

From the falls to the shelter was fun, we walked right on the edge of the river!

Mac n Cheese for dinner again! I didn't spill the noodles this time! Whoop! Whoop!

May 31 - Overmountain Shelter to Mountaineer Shelter

Yay pictures!

All the pictures of the mountains are from this morning. Talk about a great way to start the day!

Balds are the best part of the trail and Hump and Little Hump Mountain are no exception. Climbing mountians is so much like life. You climb and you climb and most of the time your efforts are not rewarded. But sometimes you are and not only is it pretty, it's gorgeous, beautiful, breathtaking, heart stopping, awe-inspiring, mind-blowing. Every time I cannot believe I am here. I stand there with my mouth hanging open.

So after a couple of weeks of bouncing back and forth across the North Carolina/Tennessee border we are finally done with North Carolina! And soon we will be in Virginia!

We had planned on eating lunch at a restaurant half a mile down a road that crosses the trail, but we called and they were not open. But I was promised lunch! Lucky for me a mother and daughter were being picked up and gave us a ride to a pizza place 2 miles down the road. Yummmm! While we were there I was able to update my blog a bit and finally got in contact with the newspaper reporter.

Because we had 9 more miles to hike and we had already wasted too much time at the pizza place, we called for a shuttle to the trail from a nearby hostel. This saved us atleast an hour, which we needed every minute of due to our full bellies slowing us down.

The footbridge pictured below shows our 400th mile! :D

We saw 2 more snakes, which brings the count to 8 or 9. Yuck.

We arrived at the shelter as it was getting dark, but we were still full so we didn't need the light to cook anyway. This shelter was fancy, it had three levels! Will and I lucked out and got the top level, but we had to share... with a wooden carved bear!