Well I woke up at about 8:00 this morning and it was hard to do. Last night at about 2 I woke up to a loud bang, I jumped up and seen a guy running up to our shelter. One of our guys told him to stop and the guy stopped, the guy was screaming that their were people coming after us and he heard them getting closer. We finally realized that it was one of our kids and he was sleep walking. He finally woke up and went back to bed after Bro. Ira and him went out to look for the people ha ha. The next day the kid got his Trail name: Sleepwalker. After that every time I heard a little noise I woke up and made sure he wasn't escaping.
We will be hitting the trail hard and going till lunch without stopping. I figured I better eat a good breakfast, so I ate cornbread and bacon, oh yea and a nice hot cup of coffee. My cornbread was not really done on the top but was burnt on the bottom and it was very gooey, yum yum. We are going to head down to a small stream to fill our bottles with water. A hiker told us that there wasn't much water coming out of the spring.
We left the shelter at about 9:51 this morning and it was all up mountain from the shelter. There were a lot of rocks that we had to hike on, which made it very hard to hike. We had to alter our footing around the rocks that covered the trail. We came across
I ate some cornbread and bacon this morning for breakfast and it was delicious. I cooked the bacon first to try to grease up the pan for the cornbread but it didn't work to good and I burnt the bottom of the pan and cornbread, and was that a pain to try to wash out. I ate it and it was still delicious. Well we are going to go get some water down at a spring and then start off on the trail. We always fill all three of our bottles up because we don't know when we drink it, after you put the tablet in you have to wait a half hour before you drink it.
Well we left camp at 9:51 this morning after filling our water up. The trail was mostly all up hill and there were a lot of rocks on the trail, and you had to finagle your footing around the rocks. We came across some mountain berries and took a break to eat some, wow were they delicious. When we filled up our bottles this morning we could only fill 16oz, because the spring was almost dry. After 2 1/4 miles we arrived at the Green Cove Creek so we can fill all our water bottles, eat lunch, and have devotions. I am sitting on this big rock watch people bike down the Virginia Creeper Trail, and people are stopping taking pictures of us acting like they never seen hikers in there life, its kinda funny. There is a shuttle that takes bikers up on top of Mt. Rogers and then they bike down the mountain, which I will be putting that on my things to do. We got here at about 12:09 pm and this water sounded so refreshing and I am really thinking about jumping in it. I am having Peanut Butter crackers for lunch and I'm not really a peanut butter guy but it is very yummy on a trail. Well we are going to do devotions and then pack up and leave so I will be back later tonight.
We left our awesome lunch spot at about 1:20 pm and started down a old train track called the Virginia Creeper Railroad Bed. We walked across the really tall bridge, there was beautiful river that went under the bridge with a lot of big rocks in the river. After crossing the big bridge we turned back onto the Appalachian trail which has been a lot of climbing since the shelter. This morning when we left the shelter we started at 3,400 ft and we hiked down to about 2,300 ft. We had to stop a couple of times to wait for the back guys to catch up. We stopped at this little creek crossing at about 2:40 pm where some of us washed up while we waited for the one guy to catch up, he was struggling pretty bad but he kept pushing himself. We stayed there so that he could rest for awhile, then we packed up and left at about 3:20 pm. As we walked you could see mountain peaks for miles it was so awesome. We went about 1 1/4 miles and came to the Lost Mt. Shelter where we stopped to take our packs off and let the one guy catch up to us. We talked about staying there for the night but the majority of us wanted to push ourselves to the next camping site. We all packed up and started back on the trail. The next camping site was about 1 1/2 miles, so we had to hurry to get there and set up our tents before dark. We came to US 58 which is a kind busy road, the good news was that the camping site was right in front of us. Whenever there is good news on a trip there has to be bad news, the bad news there was only room for about 2 tents if that, and we have 4 tents. We all decided we should move on and at this point we were all tired and wanting to eat, it was getting dark and we still didn't have a camp site. We decided to just trust God and move on down the trail. As we started off we went about an 8Th of a mile and guess what it was a huge camp site, with a very very nice fire ring and wood that was already there in a pile. Just like God says trust on Him and he will meet your needs and give you more than what you needed, God is Awesome. My goal on this hike is to learn something every day I hike. One thing I learned as we were hiking is we have one kid that is usually way behind, but he is a pretty big kid so I respect him for even stepping foot on this hiking trip, let alone hiking 16 1/2 miles without complaining. Anyway as we stood on the trail waiting for him and his partner to catch up they walked around the corner just singing songs, that really hit me how before his partner was with him he was having a really tuff time, but as soon as his partner started hiking with him and started giving him encouragement he kept going and doing it with a smile. So many times on our trail of life we try to get close to God and try to do it by our self, but we cross rocky areas and stumble and want to give up. As soon as we put ourselves around those christian friends and positive influences we start singing and praising God and those bumpy trails and rocks aren't as hard to get across. The lesson to be learned is we can never do it alone.
We set our tents and started a fire. We got our dinners out and I had chilly mac, I'm not really a chilly guy but I shouldn't complain because it is food. After dinner the three of us older guys went down to the creek and did our laundry. This was new for me but it was very good cause now my cloths smell good. We came back and just sat around the fire and sang and talked, then did devotions. After devotions we sang more then I headed to bed and here I lay. Today we set a very good pace and made good headway for the group we got.
Starting Elevation- 3,400 ft
Lowest Elevation- 2,600 ft
Highest Elevation- 3,400 ft
Ending Elevation- 3,200 ft
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