Samwise Hikes the Appalachian Trail! - Trail Journal -
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June 13, Hog Camp Gap - mile 793.3

  Another wild & wonderful day on the trail filled with beautiful scenery & incredible generosity of strangers. I was delighted & stunned to receive a breakfast of pancakes, sausage, cereal, cookies & a Coke after four miles on the trail this morning, when I arrived at a road crossing. Dan & Judy Williams are a local couple who come out for two weeks each summer, once in May and again in June, with their pickup & topper full of food for thru hikers. They serve up breakfasts in the morning to whomever comes through, suppers at night & snacks & sodas all day long. I can't even begin to describe the feeling that came over me as I came down the path to this scene & realized that I was meeting more trail angels. It was a combination of incredible excitement, happiness, hunger, gratitude and awe at such generosity. They have been feeding us dirty, smelly, hungry hikers for nine years now & seem to love every minute of it. WOW!

To make my day even more special, I met another trail angel about 6 miles later, at another road crossing. The guy, Ken, spends part of his summer at one of the campgrounds where the trail passes nearby & he offers shuttles to hikers as they come through. Today he was meeting a hiker at that road crossing and passed the time by hanging out with a cooler full of sodas & candy bars & offering them to us as we came by. The timing was so perfect, I nearly danced with joy, except I was too tired to dance. I was 1 1/2 miles up a 4 1/2 mile killer mountain, innocently named "Bald Knob" & that cold soda & Butterfinger gave me exactly the sugar hike I needed to keep plugging.

After Bald Knob, I came to a shelter & stood there for close to 10 minutes, trying to decide whether to stay or keep going to the camp spot I had in mind. The major deciding factor was that the shelter was .6 mile off the trail, adding over a mile to my day's mileage, when the camp spot was only 2 miles away. As tired as I was from that Knob, I decided to keep on climbing until I got here tonight. There was only one more mountain to climb & thankfully, it was far less steep, plus the views from on top were phenomenal. It was one of those grassy southern balds, I think one of the last we will cross.

So here I am not, camped in a meadow with several other thru-hikers, tired but happy as a clam. This is such a beautiful place, much nicer than any shelter, & I'm glad I made it here.