Date: 2004-05-07
From: Trimpi Shelter

To: Partnership Shelter
Miles today: 10.6
Weather: clear sky

The day broke beautifully, sunny and a tinge of warmth. Since the plan was for ten miles, I sat at the shelter until nine, writing responses to some e-mail, edited some journal entries, lazied around. By the time I was ready to move out, it had gotten warm enough to hike in my tank top. Glorious day. The terrain was once again big rolling hills, pretty flowers and greening trees. And large patches of my favorite, poison ivy. Before heading out, the first morning visitors to the shelter showed up, a young couple. Very nice. Bilingual, Spanish and English.She was North American and he was from I think he said Peru. They met when she was an exchange student.   Cute. I started out, heading up the hill.Rather interesting hill, it kept bumping up and up. I kept thinking I had reached the top, and it went up again. It wasn't bad; it was just interesting and long. It seemed the each little bump was very different. Some of them were rocky, the next was treed, and the next was huge field of MayApples. I finally saw some in bloom. I hope the cheesy disposable camera was able to capture the flower. Finally found a large enough batch of Squawroot to take a picture of it too. The flower book says bears like it. I thought, bears like honey, maybe it's good. I broke off one chunk. Yuck. I saw another huge moth fluttering on the path. The last one I saw and wrote about was identified by e-mail as maybe a Luna Moth. This one was different. It was blue and green with black eye marks. It had a hole in one wing. It looked like a walking stick hole. Kind of sad to think that a hiker might have obliviously poled the wing. I moved it off the trail.I saw a Jack-in-the-pulpit. According to the flower book, it shouldn¢t have been there, but there it was. It was very pretty. Watch a couple butterflies mate. Pretty black and blue butterflies. Lunch time, I started looking for a good place to stop and realized the path was on was a field of poison ivy! Pulled my poles and moved on. I finally ran into the young couple from this morning. They had sat down right on the path. They had as much luck as I did looking for a lunch spot. We sat and talked. They trained for the hike by hiking in Peru. They were school teachers in Peru and after the hike they will be moving to Oregon. That should be interesting.   The afternoon walk was short and sweet. IN less then two hours after lunch, I arrived here. Some folks here already. This shelter is popular for its location, next to the park visitor center. The shelter has running hot and cold water, a shower. Less then 100 yards, the visitor center has a soda machine and a phone. The phone is used to call in pizza. As the crowd grew, the pizza orders started. The delivery guy offered to give a few guys a ride to town for beer. The atmosphere here is a mini reunion and new gatherings. Discussions of who is where, who's blue blazing, wondering about why someone is off, mileages and equipment talk. The folks I know: Elle and Christopher, Jester, Tree Frog, BearTracks, Scholar and Sanguine. A number of folks I don't know but after a few beers, everyone is feeling friendly and chatty. We're prematurely celebrating getting to the 25% mark. The terrain is very friendly. I don't feel compelled to do huge miles but I think I will attempt a 20 in the next week or so. It has been suggested to make miles now in Virginia because farther north we'll be looking at only making ten miles a day again. Since I've been doing two miles a day these last few days, I may take up the suggestion. We'll see how it goes.Namaste'