Hitching a Ride

Soaking wet at Winding Stair Gap, we cowered close to the roadcut as thunder boomed and lightning crashed across the mountains. How would we get to Franklin?

Our friends weren't able to pick us up and the last hiker shuttle of the day had already left. Gutsy sat in her tent, out of the rain. "You'll have to hitch," she said.

Hitchhiking is not something either of us have any experience with - in fact, as kids we were taught you just don't do that. But hitching a ride along the AT is a necessity in many places, and thankfully, the folks who live in those places do often take kindly to bedraggled strangers with backpacks.

As we were pondering how to do this, a woman pulled up off the road and proceeded to unload box after box of glass jars onto the grass. "Is this where you get your water?" John asked, pointing to the spring coming out of a pipe. She said yes. "Mind if we help?"

We created a chain, passing empties and fulls back and forth to fill her collection of bottles in record time. Talking, we discovered she ran an organic farm and orchard. "Could you take us to Franklin?"

"I only have room for two," she said. Gutsy offered to find her own hitch, and so we piled in, packs on laps and glass bottles of water everywhere, as our newfound friend took us in out of the storm and to downtown Franklin.