AT Adventures: Day 34, 7-18-07

We took it very easy today, since we knew that we were going to be battling the 40 mile challenge starting at midnight (the beginning of 7-19), and rolling until we hit Damascus, VA. We all wandered to the PO, where C and I got a ton of stuff from the family, as well as a great surprise from some good friends of the family, the G’s. They made us some granola bars from…granola they had made, actually. Super tasty. We had to try them immediately. Then we wandered over to the internet café and paid to get online. It was fairly inexpensive, so worth it to drop a few emails and say hi to everyone, as well as to place my internet payment for the student loans I’ve got going on. Then we went back to the Hostel and selected all the food we wanted to take. There was a lot that we were going to mail ahead, because there was no way I wanted to carry all that was sent us along the challenge. I decided to hang onto my sleeping equipment though. You never know, and 40 miles is a long way. Brown gave us a ride to the trail in the back of is truck. He was…such an odd character. If/when I hike this again, I’ll stop by the Kincora hostel, (on the other side of the mountain), rather than that one. I’ve heard nothing but glowing praise for Kincora, and Brown’s….eh. So we hiked the 3 miles to the shelter were the challenge started, set up, and tried to sleep. It was like trying to sleep before a race…it was so hard to do. I think I might have gotten….I don’t know…maybe an hour? Two? It may have been that the time was so short as to seem shorter, I don’t know. Anyway, alarms go off at 11:45, and we are up and packing.