MST Trek Day 65

Woke up this morning, and sad to say, I will be leaving Kevin's for the last time.  He has been a wonderful trail angel and great friend.  Last night after hiking, he had a barbecue, and I got to meet his entire family.  Today proved to be a battle of wills: mine versus the extremely hot and humid conditions.  The air was so thick it was hard to breathe.  On top of that, there were no trees and not a hint of a breeze.  We were excited at midday to come to our only restaurant.  Our hopes and dreams were "dashed on the rocks below" because it was Sunday-- the only day of the week the restaurant was closed!  Water was a problem as well.  I carried 5 liters with me-- much more than I would normally take, because I knew there were only a couple of churches where I could refill.  After being out of water for over 2 hours, we stopped at a church to refill our bottles, only to find that the spigot handle had been removed!  We had to finish out the last 2 hours of our day without water.  Tennille did better than I, as there were a number of puddles-- she seemed to enjoy drinking out of them more than her bowl.  We had to stop many times because of the heat so Tennille could cool down.  She turned several of the roadside puddles into her personal hot tub.  Even though it was slow going and miserable, we managed to pull 17.8 miles today. Laine again came through in spades.  After a lot of exhausting and time consuming work on her part, she found me 2 new trail angels, Donna and Jerry, who are simply wonderful.  They picked us up off the trail, took us to a campsite, and while I was setting up, Donna ran to Hardees and brought back a plethora of food: a super deluxe bacon cheeseburger, a regular bacon cheeseburger, a large order of fries, 2 apple pies, and 2 Cokes.  After having had no lunch, this was amazing.  They will return in the morning with bacon, egg & cheese biscuits and a large coffee before they take us back to the trail.  They even brought Tennille some ice cubes.  I simply cannot thank them enough. The weather, unfortunately, is expected to be even hotter tomorrow as we head to Cove City.  We will be getting an early start.