Day 49 - Bland 'til mid-day, then back at it ...

Friday, May 22nd - Up at 6:00, wishing for more sleep. Leg doing a little better, but still twinging. Over to the Dairy Queen for breakfast, and did most of my shopping at the associated Kangaroo Mini-Mart. Back to the room, sorted food into individual meal packets, then spent an hour transcribing blog reports. At 8:30, got the hotel shuttle guy ("Bubba") to take me to the Post Office, where I picked up my package from Marco. Then walked to the local IGA and picked up some cheese (the only thing not at the Kangaroo mart). Then to the library, where I continued transcribing til it opened at 9:30. Checked email, sent my upcoming trail plans to Mark so we can link back up next week, and started typing up blog reports to Pete. The disaster struck at 10:30, when a widespread power failure hit Bland, Bastians, and another local town, and 3 days of reports vanished into the ether; arrgh! I was maybe 5 minutes away from sending and heading back to the hotel; great timing, eh? I waited about 20 minutes in the forlorn hope that maybe I could recover the data, but finally decided I was wasting my time as the extent of the power failure became clearer.

Got a hitch across town to the Subway, where they were still serving food. Quite a line there, including a sports team of some sort, all wearing red West Virginia Chaos T-Shirts, but all speaking in heavy English accents. [So I'm guessing they either won the shirts, or received them as gifts.] Once I finished eating I headed back up to the hotel to re-pack - somewhat more leisurely than planned, because my shuttle driver back to the trail had had to go to a town 20 miles away for something, due to the power failure. Fortunately I could still see in the room, with the door open and blinds pulled back. The power came back on at 12:30 - I called the librarian and she confirmed that my data was lost when their computers rebooted; oh well....

By now it was quite hot and humid, so I drank about a liter of water and filled both my canteens all the way. My ride arrived at 12:45, and immediately took me back to the trailhead, dropping me off at just about 1:00 pm. Several hikers were hiking down the hill to town (including Criqui I think), and about 5 - 6 more were gathered at the trailhead, having just arrived - one took advantage and grabbed my shuttle back to town. I chatted for about 5 minutes with the others,
letting them know what was where in town, then I saddled up and moved out.

Unfortunately the road section back down to the trailhead (from 52 north) was atrociously blazed, and I was reduced to guessing where the trail was supposed to be in several places (the map and A.T. Companion didn't help). I ended up guessing wrong in one place and hiked 20 minutes up a steep hill before deciding this couldn't be right. Going back, I finally found another very faint blaze after about 150 yards, and that confirmed I was (finally) on the right route. This entire section could be re-done in 15 minutes by anyone with a car and a can of white paint, so this was really totally ridiculous, especially on a hot day where water turned out to be at a premium. Even the first couple of miles of the actual trail was poorly blazed, with old, faint blazes very widely spaced. Certainly the poorest job I have seen since starting the trek.

The trail itself was pretty decent, however, and once I got going I made it the 2 1/2 miles to Helveys Mill Shelter in short order. Got one form of trail magic today, with hundreds of large, black-purple butterflies doing their mating dances; quite pretty. The shelter was back nearly a third of a mile, and the water another long downhill from there, but I didn't have much choice today, because it was a 10 mile hike coming up, very hot, and with little or no water sources along the way. I drank a liter on site, and filled both canteens up to the brim. And a lucky thing, because it indeed was a 10 mile dry hole, with every streambed dry (not even mud). I rationed my water to a couple of swallows every 30 minutes, and made it to the Jenny's Knob Shelter around 7:00 pm, with about 2 cups left; I'm guessing a lot of people hiked themselves dry today.

The shelter was about a quarter mile off the trail, Windbreaker and One Step were there, that was it. There were two blue-blazed trails there; since the guys said that the one source was just a little pool, I tried the other first - another long downhill to yet another dry streambed. So back up to the shelter and over to the other source, a 3 x 3 foot shallow pool, but clear and cold water, so clearly spring-fed, not just a seepage; Thank You Lord! We all ate dinner; One Step was surprised to lose an entire filling while eating; fortunately he didn't swallow it, but he'll have to get off the trail for repair. Cas showed up around 8:20, nearly dark. We listened to Appalachian Folk Music on a local radio station, and hit the rack around 10 pm. Even with only 12 miles today, my right shin is still barking.