And There Were Girls There!

10-15-09 day 135
start: Vandeventer Shelter, TN
end: Kincora Hostel, TN
daily mileage: 17.5
total mileage: 1765.7

We woke up to more cold this morning. I've said before getting up and out when its cold is hard but when the wind is blowing and its wet its even worse. The six of us: Me, Disney, No Money, Buffalo, Icarus, and Root Beer, moved along together pretty much all day on our way into the hostel. Sometime before lunch we crossed the Watauga Dam, it was built in the 30's by the TVA. While the gorge it spanned was nice, being out of the tree cover even for the 5 minutes it took to cross the dam was brutal. We got to the lunch shelter and didn't even cook, we just dug out some snacks and pounded 'em down quickly so we could keep moving. We moved pretty fast so by the time we hit Kincora we were only half-frozen. Kincora is the name of the hostel run by Bob Peoples, a big time organizer of trail maintenance round these parts. In fact he was the lead guy on most of the shelter builds in the area; he's pretty sweet.

When we got there we found Gooch, Bacon and Star Trek at the tail end of a 9 1/2 hour RISK game. Gooch and Bacon left while Star Trek stayed behind. Getting our laundry done and having a hot shower was amaaaazing after being out in the weather. Bob drove us to town where we re-supplied and each got a $5 large pizza from Little Caesars to take back. We also got a bunch of stuff to use for breakfast in the morning. Back at the hostel Bob told that a group of 25 University of Tennessee students would be staying here tonight, because they were on a Fall Break service type trip, with trail maintenance and what not. What that meant for us was new faces to talk to an moreover, female faces to talk to.

Their advisor came early and decided that the place was going to be too small and rustic for the group to be comfortable sleeping but they came anyway to cook their dinner. It was great, we had a huge fresh audience to impress with tales of the trail. Plus, there were girls and we got some mucho beard respect. While they didn't stay the night, we had an awesome evening chatting and embellishing stories, I almost forgot what it was like to be around real people!