After our 20 miler I was a bit tired so we took it easy the next day - only about 16 miles to the next campsite. Again we ran into someone with the AT Plague and moved on immediately. We found a beautiful stream with a flat bed to camp by and set up there - my first adventure with "stealth camping". Everything went smoothly until it came time to hang the bear bags. All of the trees were perfectly perpendicular to the earth with no branches to toss our ropes over. Except one - a thick branch shot from a tree on the edge of the trail directly over a straight drop-off. Barbarossa and I tried about a dozen times before getting the line over and successfully hung the bags which now dangled about 30 feet above the ground below.
Then we realized that Star Child hadn't given us his bag yet. Barbarossa decided to get a long stick and poke the bag to make it swing back to grab. He did manage to grab the swinging bags but not before they dragged him bag down the hill. His giggling at the situation only sent him farther down the hill in his hiking kilt. It was quite the sight.
I slept better that night than I had to date in the tent. Hearing running water from the creek right by my head lulled me to sleep.
The following day we set off with the goal of taking down Big Bald. I was pretty slow and fell a bit behind Beetlejuice and Barbarossa but they waited up for me at every rest stop. My trail angels.
At the last peak before Big Bald something was clearly wrong with Beetlejuice but he said that it was just from drinking two sodas at lunch. I didn't buy it but decided to walk on behind the others.
The trek up the bald was violently windy with rain rolling in but the views were incredible. I reconvened with Barbarossa and Star Child at the next peak and stopped to wait for Beetlejuice. When he wasn't there in 15 minutes I knew something was wrong. Barbarossa immediately dropped his stuff and began to jog back down the trail while Star Child and I bundled up to avoid the cold.
When Barbarossa came back alone I started packing before I had heard what he had to say - I knew I was going back. When he told us that Beetlejuice had vommitted 12+ times and was setting up camp on the side of the trail I took off. Did I want to get sick? No. But we had been hiking together for over 3 weeks which means 2 things: 1) if he's sick, I'm 95% sure I am too and 2) he wouldn't leave me out there so I couldn't leave him.
I took a bypass road around the bald to stay out of the wind and a blue blazes trail back from a small parking lot to the trail. I wasn't sure if he was up or down the trail from where I was so I gambled on direction (successfully, for the first time maybe ever) and went up the hill. I found him crouched over a stream with his tent set up sideways on the side of the trail.
With water filtered, I made some tea with aloe given to me by Silver Fox and hung up his food. The tent space was sparce so I found a bit of land above the stream (the stream actually ran underneath - I am eternally grateful that the sinkhole gods protected me for the night) and set up upwind from him. Once I was settled I ran up the hill a ways and began to call every shuttle service I could contact, my hand a veritable AT thru-hiker phone book by the end. Finally I reached Ms. Janet who offered to pick us up the next morning from the dirt parking lot where I had cut through earlier.
Once I knew Beetlejuice was okay I tried to go to sleep. It was better than expected (thank you sleeping pad) but still less than ideal. When I woke up I was tremendously weak and had a raging headache. Perfect.
We managed to get back to the trail head and waited about an hour for Ms. Janet's white van to come barreling up the gravel road. She told us stories of the dozens of hikers she had to pull out of the woods (many of our friends) due to he virus.
We checked into the Super 8 as soon as we got to Erwin and found Beacon and Crazy Frog who had also been laid up and invited them to stay with us.
I feel like death. I managed to eat some dinner at a great spot called Hawg-n-Dawg (phenomenal hotdogs and pulled pork - delicious but bad idea) and do our laundry. Now it's running back and forth to the little girls room while sipping ginger ale. This is the unfun part of the trail.
I will definitely be zeroing here tomorrow. Damn you hiker plague.
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