Date: 2008-04-06
From: Jenkins Shelter VA

To: Jenny Knob Shelter VA
Miles today: 23.8
Weather: overcast clouds

Day 49 ¢ Sunday April 6 ¢ Jenny Knob Shelter VA ¢ Miles Today: 23.8 Total Miles: 593.2It rained all night long but luckily it stopped before we rose at 6:00 a.m. to break camp. We were on the trail by 7:00 dressed again in our full rain gear, as the skies were gray for day 4 in a row. Heavy rains last night definitely had an impact on the streams. The first two we came to we had to engineer our own log crossings in order to avoid a wet creek crossing. For the first stream, we made a log bridge. We hauled 3 logs out of the woods with our packs on (no one said we were smart) and heaved them across the stream to form a walkway. One log was 8¢ in length and two logs were about 3' in length; unfortunately one of the 3¢ logs we threw in did not land in quite the right place, making our log bridge a bit tricky to cross. But still, we had fun engineering and using our log bridge and staying dry!   So cool. For the next stream, just past Interstate 77, we threw a couple stumps in place to make a stump hopping stream crossing. Both streams were probably knee deep or less but the water was rushing fast and we really didn't feel like doing a wet creek crossing, so we had fun making our own solutions. While we were making our log stump creek crossing we watched several cars pull into the parking lot. We talked to one of them and learned that a Boy Scout Troop was out for a long day hike and was due back soon. We passed them a few miles up the trail. I don¢t think they were making progress as fast as planned.The other neat thing today is that we had 2 Trail Magics! The first one was an ice chest full of apple juice, OJ and Gatorade. We stopped, drank 3 small juices and filled one of our water bottles with Gatorade. Very sweet! A couple hundred extra calories, which is just what we needed for our 23.8-mile day. The second Trail Magic, just before we crossed Interstate 77, was more fruit juice. It was strawberry-banana flavored in a pouch, complete with a straw! Another 80-100 calories; so really nice. In addition to the Trail Magic, we¢re also eating more out of our own food bag, since we are making good progress daily and have an extra day¢s worth of food. We're eating every hour on the hour in the afternoon and enjoying every bit of it. The trail was very nice today - very smooth inclines and declines - not too bad. We took an hour lunch break and cooked our main meal along the trail using rain runoff as our water source. We stopped again at 5:00, took a 1/2 hour break for our dinner of peanut butter burritos. For a small part of the trip today we were up on the ridge again looking at the valley below with the beautiful Virginia farmland/pastures. But for the most part, we were just right below the ridgeline. The sad thing that we did see today was a ton of pollution.   We were near a lot of forest service roads, state roads, and highways. Any time there is easy access for cars there is pollution. We always know when we're getting close to a road, as the trash increases.We met a trail maintainer at one of the Forest Service roads this morning. He was getting ready to clear some downed trees with a chain saw. He seemed a bit irritated when we reported that the downed trees were not overly huge. We actually had trouble remembering them, as going over downed trees is just part of our normal hike. He said someone told him that there were big 100-year-old trees down. Hmmm, not sure. We really don¢t remember. He was also a bit irritated, as no one else had shown up to help yet, and there is a history of being told to report to work at one site when the work that actually needs to be done is at a different site. As we headed about 12 mile down the Forest Service road a car passed us. Hopefully it¢s another trail maintainer!Although it was gray all day, it never rained. We had our seal socks on for all but the last 3 miles because the trail was just like a stream. Our Gor-Mesh shoes are no longer watertight. The bad part of wearing seal socks for so many miles is that our feet sweat and the seal socks become quite smelly! Once these gray skies clear, we need to hit a stream and get them washed as well as ourselves! We arrived at camp at 6:45 not quite as tired as yesterday, though we do agree that 20+ mile days are not our cup of tea. Probably 16-18 mile days are more to our liking. Perhaps the shelter spacing will be better within a day or two. There are 2 other guys here. Lucky (his actual nickname, not a trail name) is attempting the trail for the second time, and Tim, a 3-time thru-hiker.   They just started the trail today and will be doing a flip-flop hike together this year. They are going from here north to Katahdin and will then flip-flop back to here and head south to Springer.   We wish them the best.   Believe it or not, we all tented tonight. Three tents, four people, and no one in the shelter! Unfortunately when we arrived Tim and Lucky had placed their tents so that it was not possible to fit a 2-man tent in the remaining area, unless we wanted to pitch a tent under a dead limb. Hmm, not so much. We were very fortunate that Lucky volunteered to move his tent to make room for us! How very nice of him!   Unfortunately though for us, the tents were close together and the noise of escaping bodily gas could be heard from a nearby tent. Not quite the music one hopes for while drifting off to sleep!It's 8:00 with temps in the 50s. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a bit less gray. Due to another big day tomorrow (22.6 miles to 2 shelters down), we're going to move the alarm clock back to 5:45 to capture more morning light.   We really enjoy our morning hikes much more than our evening hikes. Goodnight from Virginia with 3 tents lined up together beside the shelter and nobody in the shelter.