Date: 2004-05-01
From: Waynesboro, VA

To: Waynesboro, VA
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

7/27/04 TuesdayWhat a strange day!It started out sunny, and Waldo, Early Bird, and I packed up camp and set out. It was a gorgeous section of trail, beside a resevoir, and then along a river, with the sun shining through the leaves. We got some trail magic at the first shelter, from an older couple, Flash and Hot Flash, forner thru-hikers who hiked in with soda and doughnuts. We set out from the shelter for a four-mile climb to the top of a mountain, where we were going to eat lunch.Then the sky suddenly darkened and it began to SNOW. We watched a huge dark front blow through from one direction, and then it was sunny again, just like that.As we walked to a flat spot to set up our gear to dry after last night's rain, I saw some odd-looking metal scraps down the hill from the trail, so I went to investigate. It was from an airplane, and the paint looked military - grey and olive. There wasn't much, maybe from a wing, but certainly odd.We dried out our stuff, and started hiking again. Now the wind was blowing from a different direction, and another ugly group of clouds was blowing in. They brought rain, and then it was over. For the next few hours, the wind kept shifting back and forth, from two completely different directions, and it rained, snowed, and hailed, each interspersed with sun and blue skies.We finally reached the shelter where we planned on staying, and there were Walk On, Waterfall, and Foggy Bottom, huddled in their sleeping bags against the cold weather (it had dropped to around thirty, down from this morning's sixty-five). It's nice to have more hikers around.7/28/04 WednesdayWoke this morning to COLD. It stayed around 30 all night, so everyone woke up shivering. We packed quickly and set off, because we had a plan: in the town of Montebello, at the Dutch Haus Bed & Breakfast, they offered a free lunch for hikers. Lunch started at 11, but we were all so cold we set off early anyway.The two miles to the road crossing went quickly, and then we were in "downtown" Montebello, which consisted of a small post office and a country store. We got a ride to the B&B, where we hung out on the lawn for several hours until lunch, which was tacos, refried beans, as much lemonade as we could drink, and chocolate cake for dessert - all free, without having to stay at the B&B. We ran into two other hikers who had stayed the night there: Redbeard, who I haven't seen in a long time, and Clown, who's always been just ahead of me.After lunch we got a ride back to the Trail and hiked for half a mile to Spy Rock, where we all stopped and rested and enjoyed the views. Then we hiked four miles to the next shelter and rested again, and ate a second lunch. We then hiked five miles off The Priest (a mountain) to the Tye River, and rested and snacked again. Finally another two miles to the next shelter, where we stopped for the night and ate dinner. By this time it was getting dark, but we'd only hiked fourteen miles all day. It was a long/short day, and felt so relaxing. This is also the largest group (eight people) I've hiked with since Georgia or early North Carolina. It's fun to have such a large group of friends.4/29/04 ThursdayI knew there was a big climb right away this morning, so I woke at dawn and hit the trail right away. As it turned out, the climb up Three Ridges, while tall and long, had a lot of switchbacks, so it wasn't so tough. I was humming to myself the whole way up, so I wasn't out of breath. Near the top, Waldo and I saw two deer, a mother and child, grazing, and we stopped to watch for fifteen minutes. They knew we were there, and went about their business as normal, raising their heads every once in a whlie to keep tabs on us. When we started to walk on they grew alert, but let us pass without running away.We got to the next shelter early, and let everyone else catch up. We all lay in the grass in front of the shelter, eating and letting the sun warm us. When everyone else left I stayed a little longer, moving into the shelter to get out of the sun. While I was there Kung Fu showed up, another kilted hiker who's been following me for a while. We exchanged the usual conversation when a hiker catches up to someone: where people are behind you. You can read about the people ahead of you in shelter registers, but the ones behind are always a mystery until someone catches up.The next shelter was sixteen miles from that one, and I didn't plan to go that far. My plan was to walk another eleven miles, and then do the ten into town (Waynesboro) in the morning, heading straight for the all you can eat pancake breakfast at Weasie's. Either my sense of distance was off or the guide book was wrong, but the promised springs never materialised. Waldo and Early Bird were with me at that point, and they were also confused. We decided to push on to the shelter, which is where everyone else was going. We arrived tired, with sore feet, but at least now we only have five miles to go into town in the morning.