Beam Me Up, Scottie!

So we've officially hiked 405 miles of the AT! After my last post, Wheels and I took a double zero in Erwin, TN. It kind of happened on a whim -- we were walking back to the trailhead, looking for an ice cream shop on the way and a stranger in a red pick up truck stopped us and asked if we needed a ride. After talking for a few minutes, he told us he owns a new hostel called Cantarosso Farms that caters to AT hikers. He and his wife are beekeepers and trail enthusiasts that wanted to offer a quiet alternative to the typical hiker hostel. We were planning to leave town but he piqued our curiosity, so after grabbing a couple of Oreo milkshakes, he drove us to the farm.

Best. Decision. Ever.

Cantarosso Farms is a beautiful 90 acre property with a half dozen painted honeybee boxes lining the long driveway up to the house. It sits right on the Nollichucky River so we fell asleep to the roar of rapids passing by our tent site. After spending some time with the owners, Peggy and Mike (and their 3 hilarious dogs), we were quickly convinced that we should stay yet another night and take advantage of their "slackpacking" option. Slackpacking is when you leave your full pack at a hostel or hotel, hike a section with a day pack and then get a ride back to your hostel/hotel at the end of the day. We'd seen others do it but it was our first time. What a treat! We felt like we were weightless; we flew down the trail and knocked out over 20 miles in a day, allowing us to make up for the double zero we'd had in Erwin.

After our 2 nights with Mike and Peggy we headed out for another 3 day stretch without town stops. The trail has such a personality -- it fluctuates from a tropical, humid rainforest to a barren parched field all within the same day. We hiked a series of balds this week -- the kind of mountain tops that make you want to start singing "The Sound of Music" whilst running open armed in the wind. We camped by the highest shelter on the AT at Roan Mountain, and visited one of the largest natural rhododendron patches in the US -- however, the flowers don't bloom until June so we didn't see them in their full glory.

Our second day out after Erwin, we hiked past large patches of a local edible plant called "ramps". They are basically a wild cross of garlic and onion, which we'd been told are super delicious and bountiful along the trail. We hadn't seen a ton of them before, but they were everywhere, so we stopped for about 30 minutes to pick some for dinner. When we got to camp, I cleaned and chopped the bulbs and we ate the greens raw -- which kind of tasted like arugula. As soon as the water was boiled, we ate like kings -- we had a feast of dehydrated potatoes seasoned with Cabot's Seriously Sharp Cheddar Cheese and hand-picked ramps. It was pretty spectacular.

We pushed another 16 miles the next day to make it to a hostel just shy of Hampton, TN. We'd seen in our guide book that the fellow that run the place, "Scottie", was a big Star Trek fan, engineer and 3x AT thru-hiker, so we knew we had to check it out. After getting a little lost and going over a mile too far on the trail, we backtracked and rolled into the hostel in a terrible mood. I knocked on the front porch door and was greeted by a gentleman in his 60s wearing an ATC t-shirt, holding a small thermos filled with Mellow Yellow and Wild Turkey bourbon. His trailname was "Storm-bringer", he smiled, lit a cigarette and handed us each a Budweiser while we waited on the porch for Scottie to return. It turned out that Storm-bringer and his buddy, Wizard, come to Scottie's once a year to serve beer and cook hamburgers for hikers. It also turned out that Wheels and I were the only hikers at the hostel that night. We ended up each eating 2 hamburgers, a ton of chips, and a half dozen beers a piece. Then they whipped out the tequila...We stayed up way past our normal hiker bedtime, listening to their stories and sharing trail woes. Just before calling it a night, Wheels and I found an old VHS tape of Animal House, which we watched in our private cabin while eating Ben & Jerry's S'mores ice cream with sporks until passing out.

Today we woke up a little later than usual, still reeling from the night before. We had a fairly easy 12 mile day ahead of us so we started off slow and steady. By noon, the week-long dry spell broke and we spent the afternoon hiking in the rain. We're staying at a hostel in Hampton tonight to keep our tent dry and resupply for the last 3 day stretch until Damascus. When we hit Damascus we'll have finished a quarter of the trail -- crazy!

Wheels just got back from a town run to pick us up some Subway sandwiches and McNuggets so I am going to go eat those things. Until next time!

Catnip