Date: 2003-05-27
From: VA 600/Elk Garden

To: campsite past Wise Shelter
Miles today: 9.6
Weather: light rain

5/27 VA 600/Elk Garden to Campsite past Wise Shelter - 9.6 milesThe hills are alive...............Today has been awesome, incredibly amazing, inspiring and perfect.First, I have to say that I really enjoy hiking with Wood's Dragon. She said today that she has felt more relaxed and mellow during this strecth out of Damascus. I couldn't agree with her more. There is no pressure from either of us to get up early or out on the trail early. The past two days we haven't started hiking until 10am. We break when we feel like it and set up camp when we are tired. Anyway, I just wanted to throw that in there.Now for why today has been amazing. We hiked the too short section that goes through Greyson Highlands National park. This is by far one of the best places on the AT,and perhaps even on earth. I will try and describe it but nothing can compare to actually being here.Our first steps are up a grassy hill with bright yellow flowers and small trees everywhere. All around us are vast blue ridge mountains. (Woods Dragon busts out some sound of music tunes). We hike up the hill (avoiding the cow patties). Then after some gradual uphill to Mount Rogers (yes the highest point in VA) we cross a stile and are greeted by a PONY! He was just grazing in a spot close to the AT, just a hint of what was coming up.We took a lunch at Thomas Knob Shelter. It was very windy, but somehow the sun was always shining on us. The views are just spectacular. After a nice long relaxing lunch we started down the trail, when we ran into more PONIES!!!! They were awesome to look at and even cooler to pet. They are very acustomedto people and ate snacks right out of our hands. There were at least 3 babies too. They were fun to feed and pet but boy do they have stinky breath and bad teeth. And there was one that had a hard time getting the food out of our hands, I think she had some dental issues. There was also one that was a real hog and would scare others away. All in all the wild pony experience was the best so far. We were told there were three herds but we only saw that one group.As we hiked on there were some extremely rocky sections including Fat Man's Squeeze where the trail goes in between two large rock formations. It was tough to navigate through with backpacks on. We hiked onto Wise Shelter where we took another long break before that last .3 miles to the campsites.We got to a spot across a creek and tried to find nice tenting spots. After analyzing everything in the area and decided that between the rocks and poop we'd move on and try to find something better. That is until Woods Dragon turned around and pointed out the extremely dark and scary clouds coming over us. We stopped where we were and set up our tents. I ended up putting mine up in a grove of rhodadendrum thinking that they would protect me more. Just as we got the tents up and everything settled the sun came out and the skies cleared. Go figure. In my haste to get my tent up I put it right between two rhodadendrums and had a really tough time getting in and out so Woods Dragon helped me move it (with everything inside) to a new more accessible location. After getting settled again we enjoyed dinner under clear sunny skies and a early retreat to bed in hopes of dreaming about running over wildflower covered fields with the wild ponies.