From dream to reality

Happy New Year!  We spent last night with great friends, and now we've been slowly waking up this morning.  Over the last couple of days, I've been going over our AT posts and fixing some broken picture links, adding tags, etc. and I came across this picture.  It was taken just outside of Standing Bear Farm, north of Interstate 40.  In 2004, we were on I-40, heading home to Nashville from a wedding in Columbia, South Carolina and decided to locate the AT on the way.  We had just started talking about hiking it at that time, and I was still placating my wife's dreams with my "yeah, right" mentality.  Roxanne added the picture to a scrapbook that she made for our first anniversary, before our first digital camera!

So here we were, five years later - Appalachian Trail Thru-Hikers living a dream.

Chicago's Pulse: The Parks

I began my day in the Edgewater neighborhood on Chicago's North Side. From there, I caught a train into the downtown loop, and as I rode I watched the typical Chicagoan jockey for position as they continued along their way. I watched the buildings zip by from an elevated platform. I rode past Wrigley Field, surrounded by WrigleyTown. Signs on the platform say "close to the L shouldn't be measured in inches," but I can't help to think that the rumble of the train every ten minutes or so could only remind you that you are an important part of the machine that is Chicago; the machine that produces the rhythm of the city.

What happened here?!

Well.. uh..   We got busy again?

School has been exhausting, as evidenced by my inability to follow through with the idea of reliving out AT experience week by week, 52 weeks later.  Sorry about that.

We've really been killin' it at school though.  Roxanne made Dean's List for Spring 2010.  I am not as awesome as she is with grades, but I'm really loving grad school, making the best grades I can and connecting with a lot of really smart people, hoping it rubs off.

Summer has been even busier than spring was.  Rox is taking 20 hours.  Twenty.  That's all I have to say about her.

I'm in for nine hours over the summer.  I wrapped up my Summer I course, Analysis of Energy Factors, four weeks ago.  Summer II is in session now, and I am taking a web-based course, Building Healthy Communities.  It's an incredible amount of work and reading, but it's really developing my sense of purpose in the planning world.  I won't go into detail right now, because I feel like I am being really boring, but I hope to expound later on.

I'm also venturing out on an Independent Study this summer, one that requires me to head to Chicago for a week to explore.  I'll be looking for evidence that a plan from 1909 still has relevance 101 years later and beyond.  I've been reading and outlining Daniel Burnham's Plan for Chicago since summer began and have a decent idea of what he was trying to do.  This Saturday, I will walk to the corner of Nationwide and High and get on a bus headed to Chicago.   Six hours later, I'll be at Union Station in Chicago, without a car and without a hotel reservation.

Just to up the stakes a bit, I wanted to rely solely on public transit and generosity in a big city.  I've cheated a bit with the generosity, because I've already found two generous people in Chicago by reaching out to them via couchsurfing.org.  If you're into traveling on the cheap and getting to know new people, you've got to check out this source!  Basically, people offer up their couches for travelers to call home for a short stay.  They do it out of generosity and a love for life and travel - that's it!  I will be crashing at two different homes; both belonging to Urban Planners willing to help out a grad student in the same field.  It's going to be great!

I'm really overwhelmed with studying this plan before I go, planning my trip, and keeping up with my online course - but you know, that's just how things go.  I'd love to say that I'll blog while I'm out there - but it's probably not going to happen.  I hope to become an active blogger again after August 25 - the last day of my online class.

Until then, it's school, school, school!

Revisit: April, 4, 2009

Week four started off slow for us.  With the promise of bad weather coming in, we decided to take a zero day at the shelter just before the Smokeys; the Fontana Hilton.  It's got room enough for 30 hikers and has showers available because of its close proximity to the Fontana Dam, maintained by TVA.

It was here that we met Vagrant, and Mudslide and Pudgie Pie.  We also got to know Early Bear, Angry Beaver and Prarie Dog a little better.  Fidget, Shortcake and AliGator were there too, as well as Minn... oops.  Voldemort.

Coming into the Smokys, we went from beautiful weather to cold weather to snow in a matter of hours.  Our stop at Molly Ridge Shelter was freezing cold and we woke up to crystals of ice that had been formed by the briskly blowing winds.  It was epic!  We slogged our way through the Smokys, making it through the National Park before many of the crowd-pleasing features were open to the public.

We had our first encounter with speed hikers here, as well.  I can remember grinding my way up a hill, only to have someone come around me and step on the exact spot that my foot was soon to occupy.  It was so windy that you couldn't possibly hear anyone coming up behind you until they passed through your peripheral.  I remember being angry and frustrated through the Smokys, upset about any little thing that was apart from what I had experienced up to that point.  I was most upset about the trail conditions and the fact that horses were permitted on the Appalachian Trail.  I'm sure I spilled my guts about this in the original post, but to sum it up - the Smokys. like many other National Parks, are overused to the point of exhaustion.  Hikers and wild animals alone beat the footpaths into muddy submission, but when you add a two-ton horse to traffic, it gets nasty!

I remember falling at least twice a day here - beautiful falls that would surely win prize money on a blooper show!  One of these falls was right into a three foot trench where it was impossible to dig your heel in to keep from sliding forward.  The other was down the hill from Clingman's Dome.

By down the hill, I mean down the hill: on the wrong trail.  We managed to only get lost a few times during out journey, but the episode at Clingman's Dome was a doozy.  As the trail head to the massive observation tower, it makes a left hand jaunt over a medium sized rock face.  At that exact point, there is a sign that points to the middle of a fork and says "Appalachian Trail."  The problem was this:  I didn't see the jaunt to the left, all I saw was the trail to the right and the arrow pointing "that way."  We took that trail down the mountain and to a parking lot - at least half a mile off the AT, only to have to come back up the mountain to rejoin the AT and continue on what was already our longest day thus far.  It was horrible.  We about ate each others heads off at Clingman's Dome - it was probably our worst tiff of the trip.

Coming out of the Smoky's, we met some jerk that apparently ran the entire trail a few years prior.  He was with four younger men and asked if we were hiking together.  We thought the answer was obvious, and we explained that we started the AT on our seventh anniversary.  He laughed as he pushed past us and hollered back "Don't expect to finish together! Hahaha!"  So that's what it's like to live in a chauvinistic world?  I have no use for that.

Exiting the Smokys, hikers cross under I-40.  This is where Roxanne and I first touched the Appalachian Trail; we were on our way to my cousin Amelia's wedding in South Carolina and we pulled off, walked up these stairs and picked up a rock that now sits in a scrapbook commemorating our first year of marriage.  If you know our story, you know that I had no intention of hiking the entire trail at that point.  She eventually won me over, and in a big way!

Back to School!

What a week!  I haven't been sharing much current information lately because it has all been up in the air. Also, I didn't want to further confuse the situation that has surrounded my entrance into Graduate School.  Well, the result is this:  I started grad school this week!  I'm studying City and Regional Planning at The Ohio State University's Knowlton School of Architecture, so for the next two years, I will be stuck in this building:

The Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture, The Ohio State University

It's gone really well so far!  Monday was weird because I was just sitting in on classes as my application for enrollment was (still) being reviewed.  By Tuesday, I was finally enrolled and picked up an OSU ID and then I had a full day of classes on Wednesday.  It's tiring, this college stuff!  I think I forgot how draining reading can be!

I hope to post some good reflections on my studies as the weeks pass.  I'm really interested in this City Planning business, especially how it pertains to preservation and conservation.  It seems like I've got some really great classes (and a yucky class in micro-economics) this quarter; should be lots to talk about.

Roxanne is doing well in her first week of school too; but I'll leave blogging about that up to her.  Don't hold your breath.

On to the old boring stuff of how we walked 2,200 miles last summer...

Revisit: March 28, 2009

Week three already?!  In the "Real World" three weeks is no big deal, but on the trail, it was a lifetime!  If you check out blogs from March 2009, you'll see that I was so exhausted that I really didn't even have it in me to blog.  We didn't have much to talk about at the time, but some great stories now come to mind!

First, leaving Franklin, we ran into one of the hardest uphills on the entire trail.  It comes out of nowhere and it's not really even labeled on the trail guides.  It comes just before Brown Gap in Georgia, right after a major road crossing.  I swear to you, it nearly killed us.  I remember slogging uphill, barely able to lift my legs high enough to find the next step.  I was putting all of my weight on my trekking poles and we were taking a break every 20 paces or so.  It was killer!  I gave some details of what was going on a the shelter in the original post, but I never had a chance to write about the crazy events of that night!

Our first meeting with the trio of Angry Beaver, Prairie Dog and Early Bear went like this:  Angry Beaver was exhausted and there wasn't any room in the shelter.  I think they preferred to tent anyhow, so they spent about 30 minutes trying to locate a flat spot near the shelter to set up a tent.  They finally found a spot and Prairie Dog decided that it was the perfect time to teach Angry Beaver, his girlfriend, how to hang a bear bag.  He found a tree branch and tied his line to a rock and chucked the rock up to hang his line.  After at least three tries, he got the line hung and attached their food bags.  He got Angry Beaver to help him hoist the bags and retired for the night.  Just before the went to sleep though, there was a crack followed by a loud crash, then one single word, said with true conviction, very loudly.  To my knowledge, they were tented about 75 yards from the shelter.  It was after dark and most of us were nodding off, until this happened.  We all giggled as we drifted off to sleep.

At about 3 AM, there was more commotion in the shelter.  I remember waking up to Mr. Mad Kiwi's red headlamp light bouncing around the shelter and hearing a horrible squealing noise running right at the shelter.  Within seconds, everyone was up with their headlamps on trying to figure out what was going on.  We're still not sure, but here's what I think happened:  That particular region is crawling with wild boars that were introduced ages ago to give rich folks something exotic to hunt.  Since then, the boars have been responsible for ripping up trails and making a muddy mess of the AT in the area between Hiawassee, GA and Hot Springs, NC.  This thing - whatever it was - smelled horrible, worse than I can imagine any animal smelling.  I think that a wild boar must have been sprayed by a skunk early in the morning and was on a mad tear through the woods fleeing to safety!  It sounded like a horse as it ran through camp and the squealing continued as it ran uphill to the shelter, downhill through a gap and then back up the next hill.  It finally trailed off into the distance and we were all able to get some much needed rest - but the conversations the next morning were filled with speculation.  We had no idea what we had just witnessed!

A couple days later, we found ourselves at Sassafrass Shelter on what would be another crazy night!  We were really bonding with the Mad Kiwis by this point and were excited to seem them at the shelter.  There were some other hikers that we were honestly beginning to become tired of seeing - one specifically carries a serious reputation for making an incredible amount of noise, popping up where you least expect him and unpacking and repacking his pack by the light of his headlamp while other hikers are trying to get much needed rest.  I will refer to him as Voldemort, so as not mention his actual name, but other hikers will certainly know who it is that I'm referring to.

Some blustery wind brought rain into camp that night and we tried our best to keep warm and dry.  Several hikers had a brilliant idea to attach their rain flies to the mouth of the shelter to help keep the wind out and we somehow packed 16 people into a shelter made for 14.  Then, the 17th hiker showed up.  You guessed it, Voldemort.  He was quite disappointed to find that there were no free spots to lay down in the shelter.  He went so far as to peer behind out makeshift rain-fly curtains to ask if any of us were Spring Breakers, suggesting that Spring Breakers are somehow not privileged enough to sleep in a shelter and should give up their spot so that he would have spot to sleep in.  All of us were Thru Hikers, very much glad that we would not have to sleep next to this guy - he's a horrible snorer, by the way.

Turns out, he parked himself under the ladder and in true fashion, his head rested at the foot of the ladder.  I somehow missed it, but in the middle of the night, an older hiker found himself with the need to answer Nature's call and stepped right on the 17th hiker's head on his way to the privy.  How I missed the scream, I have no idea!  Oh, the stories!

Another sure highlight of the week was hearing a man singing at the top of his lungs at a far off distance.  The singing was catching up to us very quickly and within minutes, were were forced to step aside and let a shirtless Early Bear run pass us, singing at the top of his lungs.  Running down the trail with a 50 pound pack, shirtless in a southern rainy mist - can you imagine?  Later that day, we happened upon the very first sight of Spring - a beautiful white flower poking through the soggy brown ground cover.  It was a welcomed sight; the trail was on its way to being a much prettier place!

Revisit: March 21, 2009

One year ago today, we were on our first zero day! We had hiked for almost two weeks day in and day out until we crossed the border between Georgia and North Carolina! Sure, we had some nero's in there as well - days were you walk just a few miles until calling it a day to rest your body, but never a zero - where you don't hike at all!

The first part of that week began in Hiawassee, Georgia where we dried out after our first rainy night on the trail. We stayed at the Hiawassee Inn and as soon as we got our room, we pulled everthing out of our packs and spread it out all over the room! We took showers, left our laundry to be washed by the innkeepers and turned the heat up as high as it would go to push the moisture out of our gear - it was crazy!

That night, we ran into Pecan again. He came into town late because he apparenty hiched the wrong direction. He told us he was going to go look for food and he came back to our room with several boxes of muffins that he had found in a grocery cart outside of a dumpster behind a store. He offered us some, but I'm pretty sure we declined. The next morning, we saw the boxes again on a picnic table in front of the hotel; this time with only a few muffins left. Lesson number two: Hikers will eat anything!

As we continued hiking, we found ourselved crossing our first state border, reaching the infamous Blye Gap tree. This is probbaly one of the craziest looking trees on the trail becasue of the way the trunk is horizontal to the ground. I'm not sure if it applies to the tree, but Native Americans used to tie weights or anchors to treets to force them to grow in a bent manner. They did that to mark paths around their camps - one of the mindblowing things about the AT is that these paths have been around for ages! Essentially, the AT is a network of old footpaths, horsepaths and carriage roads that have been connected into a single trail stretching over 2100 miles. Wow, right?

We had great weather this week, unlike several of the other hikers we eventually met up with, saying that they went three weeks before a seeing a sunny day. We count ourselves blessed for the beautiful weather that we had. We also said goodbye to most of the pack that we had been with at Mountain Crossings at Neel's Gap, they simply found their trail legs before we did - we were terribly sad. McBride, Loki, Read Rocket, Phoenix and Ziggy and Thin Mint got to Franklin ahead of us; we were now hiking consistantly with The Mad Kiwis and Vagrant.