A (Trail) Magical Day

So, I woke up this morning at the Mountain Inn and Suites in Erwin, Tennessee, which is a hotel on sort of an access road to the highway. I’d heard that some other hikers had called about getting a room here last night and were quoted a pretty high rate, but S. was able to lock down a good one for me using her online skills. [Wife note: Online skills = Priceline. Ha ha!] I think what normally happens is that hikers just walk in and get gouged.

I was only expecting to hike about four or five miles today, but you know, plans change, and this was really the first day that my plans were relatively fluid. Up to this point, I’ve always had a very specific endpoint in mind, but today, I didn't. One of the reasons for that is that the spacing of campsites now is fairly inconsistent and erratic. So you can have either a really short day or a really long day. I think it’ll even out a bit later on, though.

What a lot of hikers choose to do is slack pack some of these sections. That’s when you either get a ride to a spot further down the trail and hike back to where you started, or you hike down the trail a ways and then get picked up and driven back to where you started. And since you’re not spending the night on the trail, you only bring what you need for the day. So, water, food, some basic first aid supplies, but not your tent or your sleeping gear or your stove. So your pack is a lot lighter, and you can cover more ground more quickly.

So, a good number of thru-hikers, Northbound hikers, especially, will get a shuttle from Erwin to take them 20 miles down the trail, and then they hike back (Southbound). There’s definitely no shame in slack packing, and I imagine I’ll probably do some of that later on in my hike. But basically, by slack packing this 20 mile section out of Erwin, you can get back to a more regular shelter, or campsite, intervals.

As I said, I wasn’t planning on doing much mileage today, so I sort of took my time getting going. I ate breakfast at the hotel, and then I had about a mile walk back to the trail. I just followed the access road back to the highway, passed through a little bit of a neighborhood, and reached Uncle Johnny's hostel. I needed to get a few things from the little store there, so I went up on the porch, and a bunch of hikers I knew were hanging out there. Praying Mantis and Better Yet. Also, Coffee and Bodacious — who were waiting for a package that ultimately never got delivered.

And then a fleet of other people suddenly showed up. One was this guy called Speedboat, and this other guy, whose name escapes me, just comes bursting out of the woods and basically runs to Johnny's. He'd managed to do 16 miles in four hours, which is just mind-boggling. When I did that same stretch, it took me about nine hours. But he's young and fit and all that.

Then, a guy named Napoleon showed up. He’s got this short, stocky build and legs like tree trunks, and he hikes a good 20 miles a day. Basically, hiking is his life. And he's just full of platitudes all the time, no real conversation, but today, he asked me how my feet were doing. I said, “You know, my shoes are feeling a little bit hard these days.”

And he's like, “Wow, you got to go to a hiker box. A lot of people leave insoles in hiker boxes.” And I'm thinking, That’s crazy. Who leaves insoles?

So I went over the hiker box, and — lo and behold — there was a really nice pair of insoles! They were from a shoe brand called Topo, which is apparently very popular with high-distance hikers, but I guess they like to swap out the insoles. So within a span of five minutes of running into Napoleon, I went from not even knowing that I might find insoles in a hiker box to having brand new ones in hand that were my exact size! So, another example of how “the trail provides.”

Around this same time, I overheard some people talking about how slowly their power bank was recharging. And this English guy piped up and started explaining that you have to match the wattage of your power bank to the wattage of the plug for the bank to charge up efficiently. All of that was well over my head, but basically, the bottom line is that I apparently don't have the right outlet plug for my power bank. So I need to go on Amazon and figure that out. He said that if you have the right one, you can charge up fully in about an hour, but if you have the wrong one, it can take a good 12 hours. So again, I had a problem, I go to Johnny's, and suddenly, I have a solution. The trail keeps providing.

By about noon, I figured I had to get rolling, but again, I was only going to do five miles. So, a couple hours later, I get to the shelter I had in mind, and there's some homeless guy staying there. He's pretty benign and all, but I didn't feel great about sticking around. Some day hikers were passing through and told me there were some nice camping spots just few miles further up the trail, so I kept going. On my way, I bumped into some hikers who were slack packing, and they said I needed to hurry up and get to the road crossing a few miles ahead, because someone was there doing some Trail Magic. (Aaron, don't get too excited.)

So, I hustled my way to the road crossing, but the only person there was another hiker who was waiting to be picked up. She said, “I’m sorry. You just missed the Trail Magic.” Oh well. So we’re talking for a few minutes, and Miss Janet pulls up! I thought she might be there to pick up the hiker I was chatting with, but instead, she was there to wait for someone who was taking her dog for a long walk for her. She said, “Hey, are you going to go to Beauty Spot tonight?” I told I hadn't intended to, because I'd already hiked about nine miles that day after originally expecting to only do five.

She says, “Oh, it's just a couple miles up the trail. You won't regret it.” And she points to the door of her van. On it is this big image of a beautiful meadow, and the words across it say, “My happy place.” She looks at me and smiles and says, “This is Beauty Spot.”

So I’m like, Well, I guess I gotta go now, because if Miss Janet gives you advice, you should probably follow it. I mentioned that my wife follows her on Facebook, so Miss Janet took my picture, friended S., and sent her the picture. So now they're Facebook friends, which is kind of fun.

Pic from Miss Janet

It's not an easy climb up to Beauty Spot. It's a big meadow on top of a mountain, and the road up to there was closed, so Miss Janet said it was very likely that there wouldn’t be very many people up there — only ones who were willing to do the hike. She added that half the people who live in Erwin were probably conceived up there.

I made it by about 6:45, and it is spectacular up here! Coffee and Bodacious showed up not long after me, and so did Better Yet. There’s also a young guy who’s doing big miles, named Wall Street. He tends to carry extra food with him, and then when he runs into people who are low on food, he sells stuff to them. I don't think he gouges them or anything like that, but everyone calls him Wall Street.

So we all set up camp and watched an absolutely gorgeous sunset, but once the sun went down, it got really cold, so we all retreated to our tents. It was a great way to end a beautiful day. I thought I was going to do just a short day, but I ended up hiking about 11 miles and wound up at Beauty Spot, and I’m undoubtedly better off for it. You just never know what's going to happen when you wake up in the morning.