April 20th, 2016

We woke up at Bull Gap pretty late and made oatmeal, poptarts and coffee. Because we had hiked so far ahead of schedule, we only had 6.5 miles left to the Georgia North Carolina line at Bly Gap, and 2 days to hike there. We decided that we would reward ourselves with an easy 2 mile hike to Plum Orchard shelter. We walked at a nice leisurely pace and took long breaks to finish off our food on our last day in the woods. We met a nice trio of hikers while we ate lunch a mile from Plum Orchard and also an interesting older man named Squarepeg. He was a ragged looking man with a scruffy orange beard and thigh shorts. He told us that he had already hiked the AT once last year and was coming back to do it again this year. Squarepeg is also the one who finally gave us good trail names. We had been given other trail names by other people we met, like The Burger Boys and Shelterhalf, but we thought that they were pretty bad names. Squarepeg told me that I looked like Rambo with my bandana on my head and Ford looked like Indiana Jones with his bandana around his neck, and so he settled on the trail names of Dr. Jones and Rambo. We continued on to Plum Orchard and got to camp early. Over the 10 days we spent on the trail, Ford and I developed a routine for setting up camp that by today was perfectly mastered and efficient. When we get to camp, we set down our stuff, drink some water and then both set out to gather firewood. We try to get enough to last us the night so that we don't need to get more later. Next, Ford begins to make the fire using his own method in which I have noticed to be him setting a little stick teepee on fire using a lighter and dry leaves, while I will get the stove and begin making dinner. Most of the time making dinner consist of me boiling water for some sort of meal like ramen or Mountain House, but almost every meal there is some special thing I do to the dish to make it pop. For example, in the ramen tonight I threw in some cheese and sausage to spice it up a little bit. Also, tonight we ran out of propane again, so I had to use oven mits to hold the pan over the fire to boil the water. After dinner we set up our Eno's, tent, or both and prepare our packs for the next day so that we can get ready quickly. We brush our teeth and then get in our sleeping bags and write our blog for the day. Tonight we set up the Enos but a hole in my Eno ripped open and I fell through my split hammock onto Ford in his Eno below me. Upset about the loss of my Eno, which I got for Christmas, I decided to spend my last night in the woods on the ground in my sleeping bag.