Day 97

Another 22 mile day planned to get us to the shelter that started it all for me. Along the way we passed a lot of animals. I'm beginning to think RJ attracts them somehow. First we found this little guy hiking his way up a mountain.

 A little later in the day we ran into this black snake doing his best Ostrich impression. When we nudged him to get him off the trail he tried to pretend he was a rattlesnake and shook the tip of his tail at us.

 A little later on we ran into a cute little baby collared snake that was about 3 inches long. Then as we were on the approach trail to our shelter RJ walks right over a copperhead and yells COPPERHEAD. I manage to put the full breaks on in time which is for the best cause that snake was defiantly not going to let another creature walk over it. Out of time at the library. Will update more tommorrow.

I've had really bad reception with the phone again and didn't make it back to the library so back to updating now. We stopped at the Blackrock Spring Hut. This shelter was where I stopped off during my "Hell Hike". Way back when before I started all this and it was just a simply an idea Sean suggested I do a hard hike in really bad weather to ensure that I wouldn't wimp out. So I arranged a 30 mile hike over 3 days with lots of ups and downs during a weekend that was going to be "cold" and wet. These were conditions that at the time were very daunting to me and I knew if I made it through this hike the only thing on the AT that would stop me would be snow/ice; boy was I naive. On my first day of the hell hike after about 9 miles of hiking a thunderstorm blew through so I decided to take a 1.5 mile detour to the Blackrock Spring Hut to wait it out. When I got to the Hut there were two southbounders, Woody and Buzz, already there. I peppered them with questions while we all ate lunch. Me being the uneducated douchebag that I was at the time didn't even offer them lunch from my over abundant food supplies. I feel bad about that still. After the hut I went back out in the rain made it to a stealth campsite for a massive 13 mile day and was totally exhausted. I was able to setup my tent and cook dinner in a rain break then hang my food from a tree. I was glad I did cause that night there was something big crawling around my tent, either a racoon or a bear. I woke up the next morning freezing, wet and tired and decided to cut short my "Hell Hike" and just head back to the car. I ended up doing 22 miles in 2 days, got cold, wet, insomnia due to a large animal sniffing around my tent and was still inspired to go hike the AT southbound.