So my town day has been fun, relaxing and is getting a little frantic at the end! I still have to update my itinerary and take a look at the next leg to see if I need to adjust. I also still have to repack before I get picked up tomorrow. Oh yeah, and before I get picked up, I have to actually schedule a shuttle to get me. I don’t want to be racing against the clock, so I’ll probably aim to get picked up at 11am or noon and then make a relatively short hiking day of it.
My morning started by taking advantage of the hotel’s breakfast. I got some coffee (yay!) and a few sausage patties. My body is craving fats, so the sausage helped that a bit. After that, I finished up yesterday’s blog post which by now you’ve probably read.
After that, I took a shower and made some personal phone calls. I also had a Human Resource work matter to deal with. I needed to sign a letter and return it. Obviously I can’t be there in person, so we worked out a fax situation with the hotel.
While I waited for the letter to come through, I headed off to do laundry. The map shows the laundry mat to be “just down the road” but on foot it took a good 20 minutes to get there. Hiking on the road sucks. The trail is one thing which doesn’t suck. The road by comparison, sucks. I got everything washed which only took about 20 minutes. Most of my hiking clothes are not supposed to be machine dried, but I figured that a few minutes wouldn’t hurt. I ran them for about 15 minutes total and then removed them, still slightly damp.
My plan was to grab lunch at a McDonalds (remember I crave fats right now) then return to my room. Well, since my clothes were still wet, I wanted to get them airing out as soon as possible. I headed straight back to the room to lay them out.
While waiting for them to dry, I have to continually turn them – barbeque rolling style. While doing that, I decided to upload my pictures and videos. I realize now I should’ve done that hours ago because it’s taking FOREVER!!!
So, I decided to start writing this post while turning clothes and waiting for my photos to finish uploading. So now, it’s almost 6pm and I still haven’t even been to McDonalds to have lunch!!! Grrrr!!! I can almost see another night here in the hotel, but I do have a schedule to keep.
I’ve heard from some of you who are following my tracking page that there’s some inconsistencies and confusing information. I finally have checked into it and I see a few items I should address/clarify:
1. My SPOT tracker is set to send it’s position every 2.5 minutes. However, it is not guaranteed that each position will be reported accurately, or even at all. Sometimes the specific terrain and even the tree cover can interfere with the reported position and sometimes even with the transmission of position itself. Therefore, you might see gaps in the track connected by lengthy lines which make it look like I’ve wandered off trail. You can click on individual track points to see the time I was there. If you compare two consecutive track points and see an interval greater than 2.5 minutes, you’ll know some positions didn’t get picked up.
2. On the TrackLeaders map, their map of the Appalachian Trail looks smooth when zoomed out. However, when you zoom in, you’ll see their map is based on very coarse points. My track has far higher resolution.
3. On the SPOT Shared Page map, there is a track of the Appalachian Trail, but you have to be zoomed way in to see it. It is actually part of Google Maps and the trail itself is based on several years old data. The A.T. there is not the current 2015 track. As such, you might see times where it looks like I’ve wandered off trail. Trust me, I have not. I am following the white blazes, which is the official trail marker.
In short, the technology is great, but has it’s flaws. Annoying, yes. Reality, yes. Any fixes? No.
Ok. Now it’s 6:45pm and I’ve already rambled too much. My clothes still are not dry, I still have more stuff to do, and I still haven’t been to McDonalds. My photos did finish uploading though. Now I have to upload the videos. Then I have to post them here. I was originally going to make them part of this post, but I’m going to put them in a totally separate post so I can publish this and GO EAT!!! Photos will be in the next post, I promise! You can take it to the bank.
wandering on to the McDonalds…
Kelly
When at the hotel, hang your clothes on a hanger in the bathroom and turn on the room fan or vent. Air circulates both sides of the clothes and drying is faster.
Copy that – I had stuff hanging on every available hanging device and ran out of room. I had to resort to the old “laying on a towel” method for the remainder. All dry now!
lol resort to the old “laying on a towel” but then again it does work and if that’s all you could do then that’s all you could do. Anyhow im glad to hear everything is going so well cant wait to see your next post and your pics and vids love you brother and look forward to hopefully seeing you when you get to NC