Hiking Trail Journals

Appalachian Trail 2003 - Chelsea's Journals

Entry #56 - May 24, 2003

9:00 PM - Long day today. Planned on 19 miles since half of it looked easy on the elevation profile. The uphills never seemed to end, though. I was having a rough time mentally - the day just lasted forever. The good thing is that the weather seems to have cleared up some. Some people heard from weekend hikers that the weather should be good until Monday. Sounds good to me - we're planning on Pearisburg by Tuesday (Hopefully). At Jenkins Shelter tonight with CC, Takin'er Easy, DoubleDare, Mothman, Mountain Butterfly and some other dude who almost passed out while cooking his dinner and spilled boiling water everywhere.

We were the second people here (after CC) but decided to tent since the weather's nice. Everyone out here is so cool, but it gets to be too much sometimes - always having to be together and having to chit chat everytime you pass someone on the trail. So, after 4 (or 5?) shelter nights, tenting is good. We were lucky to get in the shelters with the rain, though. Last night it started raining pretty good later in the evening. We were all almost asleep in the shelter, when a bunch of hikers started showing up. It was all the people who had stayed in town the night before and had gotten late starts. It was around 9:30 when they came in - dark and raining, and had to set up their tents. Of course, they still had to disturb us by hanging all their crap in the shelter. Bear Bags, People!

OK, enough complaining. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. :)

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