Date: 2017-06-19
From: Stealth Campiste/Dragons Tooth Ridgeline

To: VA 311
Miles today: 11.0
Weather: light rain

Day 48Monday, June 19, 2017 Stealth Campsite on Dragons Tooth Ridgeline (697) to VA 311/Catawba, VA (708)Miles: 11 miles in 7.5 hours with an hour and a half break at the Catawba Grocery2017 AT trip miles: 708Total AT miles to date: 1997.5Weather: Sunny, partly cloudy, thunderstorms Lunch: Cheeseburger, Rolling Rock, Double Scoop Ice Cream/Dinner: Pepperoni Pasta SaladHikers: Cindy Lou Who, Space Ghost, and one other on the shuttle Yesterday, Cindy Lou Who reported that she had been awaken at dawn by some snorting and breathing sounds on either side of her tent. She¢d been camping alone, in a field, by the Keefer Oak, the second largest oak tree found along the trail. A nose appeared under her tent fly,  nose of a cow. She unzipped the tent and found she was surrounded by a small herd.Something woke me up around 4:30 this morning, and it wasn't cows, although I'm not sure what. I heard a snort too¢and I made a bunch of noise, but nothing went crashing off. Nor did the snorting continue. I fell back asleep.Today¢s hike included Dragon¢s Tooth, a monolithic rock accessed by a bit of technical rock scrambling. Slabs of vertical rock are precipitously balanced and, in places, held only by tree roots until the time that ice shears them free. This was a taste of New Hampshire/southern Maine. In places, I grabbed onto adjacent tree trunks polished smooth by thousands of hiker hands. This is a day when I didn't pass, or was passed by, too many other hikers. Space Ghost, a young man from Wisconsin whom I met in a shelter a few days ago while waiting out a storm, was the only person to catch up to me besides Cindy Lou Who, who almost always catches or passes me on a daily basis. She flew down Dragons Tooth as I carefully picked my steps¢slowly hobbling exactly as I felt this grandmother of two needed to do. My knees, while pain-free, are still not as bendy as that of a 19-year-old.Space Ghost and I talked and hike together for a few miles and I followed him to,the Catawba Grocery where we each inhaled a cheeseburger and a beer. At 10:45 a.m. I headed out with a double scoop ice-cream come and left him at the grocery store/gas station to recharge his phone. Arrived at Route 311 around 2:30 p.m. exactly at the time a thunderstorm rolled in. I was protected under a kiosk and had been reading about the camping/no camping options. Last year Spirit of 76 had told me that camping at Tinker Cliffs had been her best campsite¢but the National Park Service Kiosk indicated we weren't supposed to camp there. And the most photographed scene on the entire trail¢MacAfee Knob¢was only 3.9 miles away¢now in pouring rain. A voice in my head was reminding me that I could call for a shuttle and instead slack this section tomorrow when the weather was reportedly going to be clear. I wimped out and called. Tonight finds me ensconced in a tacky Daleville, Virginia Howard Johnson, where my next food drop has been delivered. I would be here anyway tomorrow night, so¢what the heck. A shower. A bed. And wouldn't you know it, clear skies again. Also--it's very apparent that hikers are contributing to the economic existence of this hotel. Most of the guests appear to be hikers.I'm now a day ahead of the people I¢ve been hiking with¢and the weird thing is that there are exactly zero familiar faces here tonight.