Date: 2008-06-24
From: Daleville, VA

To: Fullhardt Knob Shelter
Miles today: 5.0
Weather: scattered clouds

-Cornelius now has a trail journal, type in Cornelius at the trailjournals.com page, its pretty funny and worth reading- Woke up around 9 and went to the Continental Breakfast. Let me preface this next story with another story. When Cornelius came of age, his father told him of a special gene that passes through the men in their family. With this gene, people all over the world are attracted to Cornelius in order to tell him their life stories. This gene was definitely expressed this morning as we ate our continental breakfast. "So what do you guys think about foreign oil prices?", is the first thing this man says when walking into the breakfast area. Nor is the question directed at anyone in particular in the room. He finally comes over to our table and asks us directly. We say that we have been walking from Georgia for the last 2 months, so really have no bearing on this issue at all. Unfortunately this only opens up Pandora's Box. Upon hearing that we are thru-hikers this man has decided that we need all of the information and advice that he could possibly get. Sensing a pause in the conversation, I make a dash back to the room, hoping that Cornelius will take my lead and follow. However, I turn back to find him absent, another casualty in the Tourist Attacks of the AT. Almost an hour later, Cornelius returns to the room, looking physically and mentally exhausted from his conversation. Not ten minutes later our room phone rings, and its the same man, asking what our room number is so that he could give us his business card. I immediately pondered the conundrum as to how he could have called our room, since he knew none of our names, nor our room number. The man shows up a minute later, out of breath and even more excited to talk to Cornelius about anything and everything. He finally gave us the most "Even the business card is trying to hard" business card that any of us had ever seen. We still keep it as a souvenir. Since the hotel had a pool, we felt that it was our duty to go sit by it and read. Cornelius even played pool boy and cleaned the pool. Of course, I later found out that he did this only so he could wash his shirt in it. It was pretty hot outside, so I decided to just move over to the coffeeshop and wait on everyone else. I finally had to call Cornelius so that we could get to the P.O. before closing time to pick up our package. Then we went and played around at the outfitters for a while before heading over to Krogers. Donuts were on sale for $2 a dozen so we loaded up. Then we sat in front of the outfitters and almost finished off 2 dozen donuts. After that appetizer, we went across the street to Wendy's and was disappointed that he could not order from the drive thru. We finally got on the trail just before the sun went down. The hiking wasn't bad, and once we got up out of the valley, we had some great views of the sunset. We walked through a huge grassy field that would've been a great campsite except for all of the cows in it. The last climb to the shelter was pretty nice with plenty of switchbacks. Mule and I arrived first, and luckily no one was at the shelter. Cornelius and Dr. Z arrived shortly after and we all went to sleep.