Day 2: The Easy Hike

Day 2 began with a warm cup of disgusting tasting espresso that Matt made from his camp espresso maker. It was small and quite portable, but it just didn't work right out in the middle of the woods. Soon enough, we were ready to go again, and began our second day of hiking up one hill and down the other. It was uncharacteristically hot that day, but we weren't too bad off as we were usually hiking through thick woods. The one memory that stands out from this day was when we happened upon a group of Forestry Service workers on a logging road. We came trudging out of the woods and happened upon about 8 older men. Most of them looked about 60 years old or older, and must have been taking some kind of break as they were all standing around their two pickup trucks smoking and talking. We greeted them and struck up conversation about the adventures we had had so far. A couple of them talked about how they had all walked various parts of the trail and two of them had actually maintained the trail for several years, but were now 'retired'. But I'll never forget the old balding fella that sat in the white truck. Matt, Nathan, and I were talking to him and his old buddy about something, when he brings up another friend of theirs who had since died. Here's how he told the story: "You remember old Jim?" the man in the truck asked his friend standing nearby. "Yep. Used to walk part of the trail ev'ry year." "Yeh, didn't he do some maintenance on the trail ever so often?" "Yeh, even up until he died I think." "Yeh, let me tel'ya boys, ya sure don't wanna go out like old Jim did, no siree. That old bum had lost his wife and kid 'bout a year before, and jus couldn't take it no mores. So he went and sealed 'imself in this tent, and ran a garden hose from his truck's exhaust pipe into the tent and gassed 'imself to death. And donated his body to science." Now before this story, we were already feeling like we should get moving before these good 'ol boys... did something to us. However, after that story Matt and I started giving excuses about why we REALLY needed to get going again so that we could get to our next campsite. As soon as we were a little ways down the trail, that story began circulating and we were soon laughing hysterically about 'old Jim gassin' 'imself to death.' I do have to say though, they were nice old guys. A little wacked in the head from too much moonshine perhaps, but decent old fellas. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We passed Spyder towards the end of the day. He had decided to stay in the Double Springs shelter, but we kept going the extra mile to a campsite where we could be alone. That evening as we were making camp, 3 or 4 different hikers passed us, and was probably the busiest we saw the trail the entire trip. That night we had an awful time trying to get a campfire going and it took us an entire box of matches, half a lighter and some lighter fluid before we finally kindled a flame into a persistent fire. We hung out our once again sweat soaked T-shirts, hoping the next day would bring some relief from the very hot, dry weather the first two days had brought. And so we come to Day 3.