Kellie on the A.T.

Earlier this week my friend Kellie Lingle joined me for 3 days and nights of camping! I had so much fun with her, and she was a trooper. We started off our first day with climbs, and our last day ended with thunderstorms. Kellie also brought Sullivan to me, and for that I can never thank her enough! I thought it would be interesting to get an outside perspective on hiking and what I'm doing, and Kellie agreed to do a guest blog entry for me. Here's her take on her time with me:

I'm currently in the Laughing Heart hostel and Kylie asked if she could turn on the light, I said no, she did it anyway. That aside, this hike has been enjoyable. And by enjoyable I mean day two was cool, and day three didn't totally suck, but let me tell you about day one. 

Day one...about a quarter of the way into the hike I was secretly plotting my escape plan. Thoughts rolled through my head "maybe I'll just say I fell down the mountain, she'll get that text when she has service. Should I say I sprained my ankle and fake limp away back down the mountain? Will she believe that?"  No, I told myself, don't be dumb, you've hiked plenty of times, how bad could the next three miles be. Well for those that have hiked humpback rock, think about doing that for about three hours. Needless to say, the first day almost killed me, and by me I mean my knees after we went down the steep downhill. The campsite was cool, first time I've ever camped. Note to self, when using a mummy sleeping bag USE THE HOOD FUNCTION. Let me tell you how dumb I felt after realizing the next day I could have just cocooned myself into the sleeping bag instead of wearing about twenty layers to bed. 

Onto day two! Very easy hike for the day, well I lied, not very easy, but enjoyable. Max patch was awesome! It had been cloudy most of the day and was forecasted to rain, but when we got to the top of the bald the sun broke through the clouds, and besides the strong wind at the top it was very pleasant.  It made me feel like I was back in the alps again, if only I had a salami and cheese sandwich and some Italian chocolate bars, yum. As we hiked to our campsite I wished that there was more foliage in the trees and less dead brown winter leaves that were off of the trees, but beggars can't be choosers. At the campsite I realized that Kylie can literally smell everything, things that I'm pretty sure don't even have a smell she could smell from a mile away. HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?!?  It rained all night that night, but since I now knew how to properly use my sleeping bag, I slept like a baby. 

Day three, we planned to wake up at 6 am, but that didn't happen, whoops. After a late start we ascended bluff mountain and then started our long descent down the mountain. As we were going down the mountain my knees, ankles, and toes were screaming at me; it didn't help that I had fallen onto my left knee the previous day.   As I continued in the path to Hot Springs, I couldn't help but think of how Kylie is able to do this. After three days of this I was over it. Don't get me wrong, I love hiking, I love getting away from the world for a bit, but I desperately missed my bed and heat and AC. The farther we went down the mountain the more it looked like rain was going to fall upon us and about six miles in it finally did. After waking/jogging down hill in the rain for three miles I was done. I had fallen on my knee again and it was severely hurting, luckily we were at a service road and I was able to get a shuttle into town. Kylie was a real trooper, hiking the rest of the 6.6 miles into town. You go girl! We later got dinner with Kylie's new friends and they were all so nice!  They don't seem like they're serial killers so I guess I can continue to assume that Kylie will be safe on the trail, especially with her friends and Sullivan. Until next time, happy trails!