Date: 2009-06-02
From: Partnership Shelter

To: Sugar Grove
Miles today: 9.5

Bad Water or Bad MushroomsThe hike out of Partnership Shelter was pretty uneventful. The shelter itself had a shower and sink and the nearby Mt. Rogers Ranger Station had coffee and actual bathrooms with running water and flush toilets. That, and since we had just done laundry in town, meant we felt pretty clean and refreshed as we hit the trail - a rarity on most days. Soon after we got on the trail we passed a group of rangers taking a late morning beak on the side of the trail. They told us to be on the lookout for bears the next 15 miles or so and said there was a particularly pesky bear that had been stealing food. Although the weather was decent and the terrain was relatively easy, it was rather slow going because of my ankle and all of our collective aches and pains. its always harder to get going after a few days off, but since we had all just received mail drops or resupplied in town our food bags were full and our packs were heavier than usual. We could feel every ounce of it. Along the way we passed a lot of mushrooms and crossed a few mountain streams, one of the two which proved to be unfortunately for The Phlo. Being a mycologist, by education, he was fascinated by all the different mushrooms to be found on the trail. He stopped to handle many of them, several of which he assumed to be toxic. he also stopped to refill his Nalgene bottle from a stream that seemed to be fed from a spring not far up the hill side. It might have been one or the other, or something else entirely, but later that evening eh was feeling very ill again from something. We arrived at the Sugar Grove Shelter sometime in mid afternoon. We decided to stop for a snack and keep moving because we wanted to camp off the trail just before the Settler's Museum so we could hit it first thin in the morning then stop for a late breakfast at a restaurant along the highway by Rural Retreat, VA just another couple of miles further up the trail. As we sat and had our late lunch at Sugar Grove,Carolina and Nano showed up. They told us that both Walking Home and Scree Freak were off the trail. Apparently there was some concert in Pennsylvania they wanted to go to, so they took it as a good opportunity to leave the AT. Walking Home was off the trail for good, but Scree Freak would come back and hike a few weeks until he had to return home to England. Some time over the previous few days, Carolina had filled Nano in on my role in the "Genius" shelter register prank. Fortunately he wasn't a vengeful man and said he wouldn't get back at me, but he know Carolina was an instigator and vowed to get back at her when she least expected it. We finished lunch and just as we were putting our packs on to go it started to thunder and lightning, and quickly turned into a downpour. We decided to wait it out and evenutally decided to call it a day and stay in the shelter for the night. Two section hkers from Asheville, NC, came in while it was raining - both with their dogs: Catherine with her dog Xtea, and Mike with his dog Bruce. Both were very friendly and although Einstien was tired and a little grumpy, he managed to muster up some amiability and the energy to play with them.Graveyard managed to build a fire after the rain stopped and since the shelter wasn't too full we got in a few games of Euchre after dinner. We sat up a while talking with Catherine adn Mike befiore turning in for the night. It was a nice change of pace to sleep in the shelter.