Date: 2005-06-13
From: Blackrock hut

To: Aqua Blaze
Miles today: 0.7

.7 miles on ATAqua Blaze, 13 milesIn the morning I hike .7 miles to a junction with a trail to a parking lot .5 miles away. I wait for Stilts to catch up and then we walk to the road together. Unfortunately there are no tourists in the parking lot this early so we can't yogi a ride. We start walking down the road trying to hitch but there are hardly any cars so it looks kind of gloomy. After some walking we try to call Hot Crotch but Stilts' phone doesn't have reception. I guess the back up plan isn't very secure...Nothing left to do but continue our hitching attempts. Worst case scenario we just pick up the trail again and enjoy the rest of the Hobbit reading. I'd rather go canoeing though...Finally, finally some cars start coming by and one actually pulls over for us!!! Yippee!!! They are true tourists and stop at every lookout point. Kind of fun actually because we get great views from the back of their pick up truck. We even see a bear on the side of the road. Stilts' first bear sighting and my first one in the Shenandoahs.When we get to the road crossing where we need to change direction we get out and pose for a picture so our good samaritans can do a show and tell about these weird thru hikers they met on their vacation. The next hitch is fairly smooth. The man has never heard of the town of Shenandoah but we are sure it exists. We look itup on the map and there it is. Unfortunately our ride 'can't' go there (Why not? Is he a wanted man? Okay, silly word jokes). He drops us off at the junction and we try to get another hitch. It is getting really hot right now and I am quite hungry. Never a good combination. I'm feeling pretty weak and hope we'll find a hitch soon. Just when I think I might have to take a break (we're doing the walk/hitch method) a car pulls over and we're on our way again.We get dropped off at the Mac Donalds with enough time left to eat some of their healthy selection. I'm very disappointed that they don't offer the Fruit&Yoghurt parfait. I guess I'll have me a burger again.Right around noon a van full of hikers pulls up. We're going aqua blazing Yahoo!!!At the launching area we meet up with more hikers. All in all there are 28 hikers here. A huge group. Some I know but most of them I've only briefly met. And some of them are totally new faces. It looks to be a fun group. The rules and itinerary are discussed, we put our stuff in dry bags, pair up and off we go. The tentative itinerary has us cover 110 miles in five days. That's a lot. We'll see how that works out. We have a half a day now to do 13 miles to some campground. Stilts and I end up in the first group with Silent Bob, Padre, TDS, Hot Crotch, Troll, Oblivious, Anchor, Pilgrim, Domino and Bassline. We don't expect any serious danger on this canoeing trip so when we see Padre and Silent Bob pulled out on the bank right ahead of us we don't think anything of it. Until we take the rapid to the right that is. So we're headed straight for a big tree branch... we'll bounce of it right? Not really. As soon as we hit it the canoe gets pulled under and it flips. I'm trying to hang on to the tree but the water pulls me under so I have to let go. What the heck is this? I didn't expect to drown on this trip! I soon surface though and Stilts and I find are canoe intact with most of our stuff still in it. We lost our paddles though and my Platypus and Stilts' shoes. Worst things could have happened... like Padre losing his prescription glasses. Now that's not good. Thankfully we had Troll and Oblivious behind us. They were smart enough to stay left and find our paddles and the shoes. Padres glasses are forever lost...Well, this was fun and exciting. Let's not do that again. When we take a break on a grassy piece of land I unpack my dry bag and discover it's really not that dry. A lot of my stuff got wet, including my camera and Pocketmail. That's not good. Hopefully it will dry out and work again. No use getting bummed out about it. If they are damaged so be it. It's just money, right? If I keep telling myself this it might work ; )When we arrive at the recommended campground we are all quite taken by the amount of cow shit laying around. Nice! Not! Apparently we are supposed to pay a fee a mile down the road but no one wants to walk a mile let alone pay five bucks for cow patty land. There are some restrooms though and running water. We are especially pleased with the running water since filtering out of the river doesn't appeal to any of us.It turns out that the 'leading' group is the only group that made the effort to get to this site tonight since the other 16 hikers never show up. A nice campfire is built and good times are had.