Got back to the trail in a pretty timely fashion for an out of town day. The hotel in Marion wasn’t exactly on the road back to the trail so Strider and I got a taxi. It turned out to be the cheapest shuttle yet at only 16 bucks. It wasn’t fun carrying five days worth of food on a day that I wasn’t actually going to be eating any of it, but it turned out to be a good call. There’s nothing but a cheap motel and a pair of gas stations here at Atkins. There’s more to the town a few miles away I think, but this is a kind of fringe section near the AT and the interstate, so it’s more of a truckstop here than the town.
I was thinking the other day how I’ve been out here for over a month and nothing scary has happened yet. In reading and researching the trail before I left there were always stories of bears in camp, walking on mountain ridges during thunderstorms, etc. Today I had my first nerve wracking experience! I was near the top of Glade Mountain when I heard something moving quickly through the bush along the trail, a first it sounded really similar to when then partridge charged me a few days ago. Thankfully I took a couple of steps before stopping and turning around to see a massive rattlesnake coiled along the edge of the trail. I’m not sure how it moved from the brush to the trail so quickly, it sounded like it had legs and jumped onto the trail. Rattling started immediately and I stayed about ten feet away while I went for my camera. I stayed a couple minutes watching and photographing, the rattling continued uninterrupted the entire time – it didn’t move at all, just rattled and stared at me. I finally kept going, scanning the trail in front me rather intently for the next several miles. On the way down the other side of the mountain I saw a second snake, but this one was just a plain thin black snake.
I came to a shelter midway down Glade Mountain and found a note from Strider on the table, “Raven and all the others were just here, they are going to be at the Barn if you hurry.” The Barn was a restaurant in Atkins that we had been looking forward to – the guidebook said they had a one pound burger. It turned out I met up with Raven and “all the others” (DJ, Lauren, Elliot) before the Barn. They had all stopped at an old one room school house on the trail. When I got there Raven and Lauren had gone to the nearby old house/museum for a tour. Strider, DJ, Elliot and I hung out at the school house watching my video of the rattlesnake and waiting for the ladies.
When they were finally done I got to meet the “real Raven” – she is definitely as quiet as I had heard, even more than me, and has a strong German accent. We all hiked the last couple miles down into Atkins together and found the Barn was closed early and our only food option was gas station pizza. Strider and I are spending the night here, he has to pickup a mail drop at the post office. The others went on to a campsite a few miles farther, but I’m sure we will all meet up again soon. It was just two days ago that Elliot and Lauren did 25 miles and I did less then 12, and already we were at the same place again. Add to that that after weeks of following Raven we finally catch her after almost a week of all sub 13 mile days. There’s also another pair of guys here at the motel I met at Lost Mountain shelter. They were talking about doing multiple 26+ mile days. It looks like they did a couple of them, and are now injured taking zero days in town. Still haven’t found a reason to deviate from the 15mile a day plan.