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View Full Version : what's the best trail magic you ever recieved?



longshank
03-13-2006, 11:54
All and any stories welcome. What is the best, most unlikely, wierdest favor you've ever been granted on the trail by a stranger?

neo
03-13-2006, 13:45
hiking the trail for days and only seeing 1 person at most,none is even better:cool: neo

Seeker
03-13-2006, 13:56
getting sick in the woods, hunkering down overnight, dragging myself to the nearest road crossing (still 6 miles from my car) the next day, and running into not just 'help', but someone i actually knew. she lives 20 miles away from me, and we were both 40 miles from either town. she gave me a ride back to my car... amazing coincidence or 'magic'?

TJ aka Teej
03-13-2006, 14:26
Best I've ever witnessed:
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/vbg/showimage.php?i=1331&catid=member&imageuser=314
Pass the buttah! :D

napster
03-13-2006, 14:30
hiking the trail for days and only seeing 1 person at most,none is even better:cool: neo


LMAO that was too funny Neo...

gravityman
03-13-2006, 15:29
I think the best trail magic was a free night in a hotel in Boiling Springs. It was a MASSIVE thunderstorm, we were soaked to the bone, just spend an hour waiting at the edge of a field for the majority of the lightening to pass, and got in to town at 6 pm. No idea where we were going to stay, but weren't looking forward to the options - going back 3/4 mile to the tent site near the train tracks, camping in the back of a B&B or paying more than we had for a room in the B&B. We decided on camping at the B&B and were walking there when a woman on the street said rather gruffly "What are you two doing?" We explained we were planning to ask the B&B if we could camp back there, and she said "Well, Carry on then!" So we walked to the B&B and while we were trying to figure out what the hell we were going to do as the rain came down harder and no one was home, the same lady pulls up and says "GET IN! I own a hotel, and I'll buy you a room! I would hate for you to see our beautiful town from a mud puddle in a back yard! Hiking in a thunderstorm - not very smart now is it?" To which we replied sheepishly "No......"



And the rest of the story from our journal :

We found out that the woman's name was Jane and her hotel is the Allenburg Resort Inn and Playhouse. She gave us the speed car tour of Boiling Springs and the resort. The grounds of the resort were beautiful and expansive including a professional theater, cottages, several multi-room buildings, living quarters for the actors, a large dining hall, swimming pool, tennis courts and more. This was an all out country club! Gravity and I remained silent, glancing at one another every few minutes in disbelief.

Jane pulled up to the main lobby and dining hall building, turned and asked us "have you been fed?" Not having had the chance to have dinner we answered that we had not. She ran in and left us dumbfounded in the car for a few minutes while she disappeared into the building. She was soon back, handing us a key, explaining that out room and dinner were all arranged.

Before we knew it we were peeling off our wet clothes in the warm dry room, showering then on our way to the dining hall for a buffet dinner. We were treated like guests of honor by the wait staff.

We never though this day would end like this, warm and dry thanks to our fairy Godmother Jane. What an indescribable feeling to be on the receiving end of such generous act of human kindness. This experience will live warmly in my heart for many, many years to come.

napster
03-13-2006, 16:02
I believe some of the very "BEST" trail magic is yet to come.:eek: :eek: and :eek:

SGTdirtman
03-13-2006, 17:01
A bunch of drunk teenagers who had aparently stayed up all night drinking vodka on sunrise moutain gave me some bottles of water once... It was litterally 105 degrees, I had about a 1/4 of a quart of water left, and warnings at the shelter I stayed at said all the water sources for the next 12 miles were dried up. It wasnt a big deal to be offered water, but considering my circumstances it was a major blessing.

Aparently the kids had a huge cooler filled with ice and bottled water and put it in there trunk and were handing it out to all the hikers who passed by, I met up with 4 other hikers later that day who said "thank god for those drunk kids"

Funny cause when I first saw them I was thought oh god a bunch of drunk retards out here... later on one of the hikers also said they were picking up trash all around the area before they left. pretty cool guys whoever they were.

my only real "trail magic" story

the goat
03-13-2006, 17:58
i was hitching into hampton, tn once. a lady who was by herself in a nice car stopped and picked me & my buddy up. stopped for us to buy beer, took us to her house where she let us shower. her daughter did our laundry (she insisted). they ordered us a pizza, found us some natural pain remedies:sun , cuz we were bone dry. then drove us to braemor castle, but not before giving us a quart of peach moonshine.
definitely the best magic i've ever gotten!

KirkMcquest
03-13-2006, 18:44
Once, while lost I knocked on a farmers door to ask directions. He was playing guitar with a buddy, and they insisted I come in and have a cold beer, an offer which I promptly accepted. He then drove me about fifteen minutes to rendezvous with my friend.

I should mention, that, before that I got 'black blazed' and was lost for over an hour.

Moxie00
03-13-2006, 21:22
Pat from Maine and I were hiking together one day north of Harpers Ferry. After lunch she got ahead of me, First she , then I met a couple of day hikers out for a walk with their hunting dog, She patted the dog and they found out she was a thru hiker. They asked her if she would like to come home to dinner with them. She felt uncomfortable as a woman so she suggested they invite me along. When I got to the war Correspondants Monument they were waiting for me so we all piled onto their car. The man was an executive with a large company and he and his wife had a georgous home. They cooked us a great meal on their grill, invited us to shower and wash our clothes. They had national toll free service so they encouraged us not only to call home but any friend or relatives we missed. We slept in their guest room, had a great breakfast. The town they lived near was the site of a movie' The Blair Witch Project" so before they took us back to the trail they gave us a tour of all the places where the movie was shot. I had some great trail magic happen but this was unexpected and the best. I was reading my mail on the post office lawn in Cheshire and an older man struck up a conversation. He drove me ten miles to a grocery store, had me for lunch at his house, and gave me a ride back to the trail, In Ct. Four Bears, a secrion hiker, had a feed as good as thanksgiving dinner for any hiker that came along at a shelter just over the Mass. line. He even had some polo shirts with colors to wear and took a bunch of grubby thru hikere to lunch at his exclusive country club, There is some wonderful trail magic out there and I was lucky to recieve more than my share.

Sly
03-14-2006, 02:00
I wanna hike with Goat, he's blessed! ;)

the goat
03-14-2006, 09:01
I wanna hike with Goat, he's blessed! ;)

anytime, sly, we'd have a good ol' time.....:sun

Miss Janet
03-14-2006, 23:14
The hiker that knew all about plumbing....the very day I had a major water leak!

The 3 hikers that took 3 days off the trail to do sheetrock work on the house...

The new washer and dryer sitting on my patio under an ugly old tablecloth...

Dinner sitting on my table and a dozen hungry hikers waiting on ME to eat!

I really could go on and on but the point is that Trail MAgic goes BOTH ways on the trail.

wilderness bob
03-14-2006, 23:27
On top of Albert Mountain. I was cold, wet and out of energy when I rounded a corner a found a vertical sign that had the words:
T
R
A
I
L

M
A
G
I
C

written on the front of it. Fishing Fred and Gator Aid hooked this brother up. Beans, corn and rice with home made Salsa. Plus, fresh coffee all heated on top of a suspended saw blade. Heaven on earth. WB

maxNcathy
03-15-2006, 09:33
No trail magic for us yet as we are doing our FIRST long hike next month in Va.

We may build a shelter on our property here for the hikers who hike The Bruce Trail. This trail runs north from Niagara Falls for many hundreds of kilometres up to Tobermory. It runs within 200 metres of our (4 acres) property so a shelter would be handy for hikers.

mdionne
03-15-2006, 11:45
front royal, va....some friends and i were hitching out of town back to the trail when a guy pick us up in a subaru. turns out he worked at the smithsonian zoo there. he let us into the zoo (a place that is closed to the public) and showed us all of the endangered species that were under the captive breeding progam there. he then took us to a pond they keep stocked at the zoo to go fishing. he brought us out a huge 8 person tent and told us we could stay there the night. the next morning he brought donuts and coffee and brought us rock climbing with the biologist working on black footed ferrets. that evening he brought a bunch of workers back to the campsite for some beers and a campfire. he was the best!!!

MedicineMan
05-07-2006, 02:12
just simple directions to water given to me by Seiko on a SoBo hike in Georgia...next would be the Sierra Club's hamburger/beer feed at the bottom of the Priest, after that coming onto some cold water in a cooler near the I-77 interchange.....oh best ever, coming down to Fontana Dam in the dark, hiking with a co-worker who said she was a hiker, first road nc28? stopped and actually said out loud 'this would be a nice time for trail magic', the co-worker had had it by this point (it was a snow hike where the snow got deeper and deeper), 20seconds later a car slowed, window came down and a nice lady asked if we were OK!

Cuppa Joe
05-07-2006, 04:31
I can honestly say that the best Trail Magic I hit were those gallons of water set at road crossing in the dead heat of summer when the sources were few and far between. Nothing better than being able to take a full drink from liter bottle without having to wonder if you should save some in case the next source was dry.

Even better was the time I came to a crossing and the water jugs still had ice in them! Now, that, was a slice of heaven on a hot, humid, summer day!!

Cookerhiker
05-07-2006, 18:05
Last August on my first day of a Gorham-to-Katahdin section hike - my final hike to complete the Trail and my longest section hike ever - I lost the tip of a trekking pole. As I continued, commiserating on how I'd make this hike on one pole, Draggin caught up to me and produced the tip. Maybe he didn't intend it as Trail Magic, but Trail Magic it was!:)

Ridge
05-07-2006, 19:17
On the AT: Beer and Pizza

On the PCT: Water and more Water

joel137
05-07-2006, 23:28
Hiking along the Housatanic River, and we came upon a truly catered affair, complete with big tent, servers, china plates, crystal, wine etc, and a group of about 50-100 people.

It seems the local ATC trail club was officially accepting a donation of land from a local utility company as part of their trail corridor protection. The goodies were quite good and me and the three other long distancers that just happened to come upon it were quite well treated, we did have to listen to a speech. But I suppose there is no such thing as a free lunch. The complete and absolute unexpectedness of it all was perhaps the greatest treat.