the dirtbag has arrived!

so i've made it to the obed. yesterday was another driving day, and i made it to wartburg, tennessee just after sundown.
i opened up my laptop to look at the directions that i had been able to find online the night before while parked outside a hotel to tap into wireless. i wasn't able to get to the dr topo site to get the obed guide that i used last year when we camped here.

i drove up and down the highway, and all over wartburg (a very small town) looking for something that resembled any of the sets of directions i had with me. i've really got to make an effort not to arrive in new places with crappy directions after dark.

deciding to stop for directions, i drove up to a shell station and addressed the line up inside: "does anyone know where the lilly bridge is?" the lilly bridge is one part of my directions that i knew was correct. a woman answered and started to tell me how to get there, and a man also in line interjected to tell her that she had it wrong. they were really nice, the stereotypical southern hospitality sort.

the gentleman decided that i wasn't going to make it there with directions, and offered to show me the way. he drove slowly out to the campground with me following. i tried my best to remember the turns so i could save myself in case he was going to lead me down a dead end dirt road. honestly, i just hoped he was a nice guy since i was hungry and more interested in eating my 25 cent cheese and crackers that i had just picked up at the gas station.

it was one of my worst nights of sleep ever... i woke up cold enough to be uncomfortable and warm enough not to want to get up and put more clothes on to rectify the situation. boy was i sad. visions of unemployment danced in my head. some friends have asked when it's hit me that i'm on the road, that i'm unemployed... well i've had my moments and last night certainly was one of them. i was wide awake and replaying all the decisions in my head that led up to this moment. since i was wide awake, i also got hungry. now i was so hungry i couldn't sleep. it's easy to feel poor when you're lying awake cold and hungry at night. i (quite literally) was NOT a happy camper!

i heard a growl outside my tent. i felt like i had just dozed off, and now there's something outside my tent, growling just by my ear. i was awake again!! i told myself that it was one of the dogs and in response heard a wimper/whine combo from outside. i whined back, the sort of "i can't believe i'm still awake" and the creature responded with a whine of its own. we whined back and forth and i fell asleep knowing that it was one of the dogs that was waiting for me to get up and play with it.

when i finally decided that it was light enough to get up, i unzipped the door to see that the fly was covered in frost. it didn't have time to dry out since it rained the night before in horsepens and was packed up and then repitched wet. i reached out to unzip the front door, and it was frozen shut. a good effort to the second zipper and the cold caught me by surprise, strangely enough after being cold all night i was still surprised. go figure.

i saw all three of del and martes dogs in a semi circle outside my tent entrance waiting for me and when i looked back behind the tent, i found my growler/whiner/wimperer and it was a huge bloodhound. sure, so there's another dog here this year, big deal.
after making coffee i had the pleasure of meeting del, the owner of this land and he was just as nice as i've heard. he asked if this was my dog... nope it isn't mine, i thought it was one of his. this dog wasn't here when i arrived or when i went to bed, but showed up to take care of me in the middle of the night.

i've been adopted. i said that if i found a stray camp dog on this trip, i'd take it with me. this dog is way too big to fit in my car and i'd by no means be able to afford feeding it.

she doesn't have a name yet, but she tried to follow us to the crag today and didn't make it. when we got back from climbing, she was curled up again (still?) behind the tent, where she had spent the night. my fears of adoption were confirmed since the dog ran to greet me, wagging its ten pound tail.

i moved my tent to a better site (more sunlight and hopefully a non-frozen-solid tent in the morning) and the big red dog followed me around and i walked my things from site to site.

i made dinner, tuna salad - big surprise - and big red hung out with me. she got to lick the tuna package but doesn't seem to like broccoli. she did lick out the pot that i ate out of, which is still kind of gross although she did a really good job. i've left the pot to soak with soapy water... i'm just not used to dogs.

i ran into town tonight to call damian slash leave him ANOTHER voicemail. i had my first run in with save-on-foods... it's a crazily discounted food store that has pretend brands instead of real brands. there's dr pop instead of dr pepper, and all sorts of other almost no name items. i felt guilty and picked up a bag of cheap dog food for red.

returning back to the campground, all of del & marte's dogs ran to meet me. except red. i looked around to find her curled up next to my tent's new location and walked the bag of dog food over. hey, if she eats my tuna salad, she'll eat cheap dog food! i apologized to her for being a dirtbag and told her it was too bad she adopted a dirtbag since this was the best i could do.

she turned her nose up at it so i went back to the car. i was getting some things out of the trunk and turned around to see little tiny close together eyes staring back at me. she was sitting politely about 20 feet away, and let out the signature whine. i brought the bag of dog food back and dumped out twice as much as i had before, since it was all gone and replaced with a puddle of drool.

she's eaten her fill and i'm in the tent now for my second night. i can hear her snoring and i feel good knowing that i've got a huge red dog outside to take care of me. hopefully we'll both sleep a bit better tonight.