Etna - Timothy Gulch 8/19/10 14 miles

It was completely wonderful to sleep in a real bed last night and to have gotten such a good night's rest. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my cozy sleeping bag, but I would take a bed over it any day! We started the morning with phone calls to family and some friends. Chris and I pounded an entire box of large doughnuts (8 large ones to be exact) for breakfast while laying in bed watching t.v. Ahhhh, I love it!! We checked out a little later than we had planned, but that was alright. Picked up some supplies, ate lunch and began our hitch out of the cute, picturesque town of Etna, at around 1pm. Our friends had waited about 2 hours for a ride out of town, but we got very lucky. We waited for about 14 minutes and Jimmy pulled up. It was about a 20 minute ride up to the top of the mountain and he talked to us about living in VA for a while and gave us some interesting facts about the area. He as a very nice, very laid back guy and we both loved talking to him. He dropped us off at the top and he gave me a fresh avocado that had been floating around in his truck. We began our walk and accepted the fact that we wouldn't be able o get our planned 20 miles in. with only about 6 hours of daylight left, we would just have to compensate over the next two days. We called and ordered some new shoes while on top of the mountain and receiving cell reception. We had a great dinner when we arrived at camp, cheese and crackers and some Mountain House lasagna with avocado mixed in. We may have just been really hungry, but our concoction tasted awesome! -KB