Dodged the Storm - June 24

If June 21 was Hike Naked Day, today was Amish Hiker Day. Best Wife and Pappy 12 were minding their own business eating lunch at a dirt road crossing when two vans pulled up. Amish men and boys were coming out of them by the dozen. They had showed up to pick up their buddies who were hiking on the AT. Sure enough, 15 minutes later here come another congregation of Amish men and boys out of the woods. Everybody jumped in the vans and were gone before you could say Shoo-Fly-Pie.

All the talk on the trail the past couple days has been about the forecast of lots of rain and wind from a tropical storm coming north from the Gulf. We had planned on staying at the Appalachian Dreamer Hostel (bunkhouse pictured below) on Thursday night. Big time rain was predicted for Friday evening. After a home cooked dinner that filled us to the brim and a clean clean nights stay, we asked the hostel owner to shuttle us north to an AT trail road crossing, leaving our packs and gear at the hostel, hike south 14 miles back to hostel (we call this slack packing) for another knock-your-socks-off home cooked dinner, breakfast and hostel stay.

If we hustled we could make it to the hostel before the rain hit. Our rain avoidance plan worked perfectly. We slept comfortably in the dry all night. We talked to some hikers the next day who had been out in it that night who said the rain was hard enough and loud enough that they thought the world was coming to an end.

Not sure why hikers feel compelled to stack rocks in a pile. Kinda cool, but kinda weird. Often there will be one or two rocks resting on top of a 4x4 sign post. Maybe it has something to do with yoga or pop culture or something else I don't understand.