Date: 2008-04-10
From: Symms Gap Meadow VA 

To: Unnamed Campsite VA
Miles today: 16.6

Day 53 ¢ Thursday April 10 ¢ Unnamed Campsite VA ¢ Miles Today: 16.6 Total Miles: 652.3We had just a few sprinkles on the tent last night as we were falling asleep; probably lasted less than a minute and for the first time in probably a week we woke up to a dry tent and a blue sky! Wow, life is good. It turned out to be a beautiful day. It was probably the hottest day we've had. We believe it got into the low 80s. Definitely a sweaty day. By 9:00 we were already in shorts and T- shirts, sunscreen and our homemade Arab hat. For our Arab hat, we take our bandana, wrap it around our neck and ears and then tuck it up under our baseball cap. Our arms, ears and hands are definitely getting a lot of sun and we are trying to protect ourselves since no leaves are out yet. We¢ve been exposed to direct sun now for 7.5 weeks and probably doing a bit of damage to our skin. We're trying to minimize the damage as much as possible. We went to sleep last night to the sound of the frogs in the little so called pond, which we would call more of a mud puddle, and woke to lots of birds chirping before sunrise. We had lots of grouse mating calls throughout the day, even in the morning. Spring is definitely coming, more and more each day. We¢re seeing more wildflowers blooming. In the middle of the day, we saw water lily at a creek where we freshened up and cooled off by dipping our heads, bandanas and shirts in the cold water. Although spring is definitely arriving to the mountains, the day hikers tell us that the forecast is calling for the 60s tomorrow and the 40s the following day! So we're going to continue to have that spring mixture of weather. One person even mentioned the possibility of snow flurries. Ah, we'll just have to wait and see. That will be 2 days out if it does happen.We heard from some south-bounders that there was still a little Trail Magic left at Wind Rock. If we could get there before others, the one remaining soda and one Moon Pie could be ours! Our salvia glands were really at full tilt the last couple miles to Wind Rock, which helped take our minds off the endless walking on small boulders and rocks. We were just hoping that nobody beat us to the remaining Trail Magic! We got there and thank goodness it wasn't a Moon Pie but a chocolate-coated marshmallow filled Rice Krispie pie. So much better than a Moon Pie! It was most delicious. We thoroughly enjoyed the beverage too. Not wanting to carry the trash with us, we wrapped the trash in a bag and placed it by a car with a rock on top so that it would not blow away. We hoped that the car owners would haul out the garbage for us. Of course, we had no idea who the car owners were.   As we continued resting on our rock, a group of Virginia Tech college students hiked off the trail and stopped to chat with us. All 3 guys were computer science majors, 2 graduating this spring and one with 2 more years to go. They were surprised that we were thru-hikers and had started so early as they thought hikers started much later. We had to explain to them that the old folks start a little bit earlier than the young folks to avoid the crowds. After our chat, we watched them head towards the parking lot and we wondered if we had placed the trash by their car.   Sure enough, we did! When they got to their car and found our trash we could hear them remark ¢someone even put a rock on the trash so it would not blow away!¢ We decided it was time to fess up. We hollered over that we left the trash and were hoping that they could properly dispose of it for us. They were most polite about it and agreed to haul out our trash! The south-bounders throughout the day gave us the status of Josh and Amanda¢s location. We are probably just a 1/2-day behind them. Perhaps we¢ll see them at a shelter tomorrow night. The shelters are oddly spaced again and if they do a short day tomorrow and we do a long day, we¢ll end at the same shelter. We asked a south-bounder to pass on a message to Snickers and Turtle for us. The message, of course, was to call them Girl Scouts or ask them if they have any Girl Scout cookies for sale. The whole Girl Scout joke is becoming quite the routine between the 3 couples. It should be fun as we leap frog each other over the next several months to see how frequent the Girl Scout comments become between us.Finally, we have Brakeman winning a category. The category is¢¦ Skull Crusher. The score is Brakeman 1, Grasshopper 0. Woo-Hoo. He's finally winning one. Some of you may ask what a Skull Crusher is. A Skull Crusher is when you're hiking head down, plowing up the hill and not looking for dangerous overhanging tree trunks and crashing right into them with your skull. Brakeman unfortunately connected with the low hanging trunk with a big thud. He muttered, "Ow" and when Grasshopper looked back he had both walking sticks firmly planted on the ground, his head was down looking at the ground and he was wobbling in a tight small circle trying to get his balance.   Eventually he stopped wobbling and just rested his head on the sticks for a few moments. One hurt pup! Grasshopper, as the leader, is supposed to give the "heads up" when low hanging branches are coming. This time she did not give the signal, as we were backtracking and having just passed through this area she didn't figure it was necessary to call it out twice. Luckily he's OK.   No cuts, no bruises, but definitely a big bang that came as quite a shock. Once we knew he was OK, it was safe to admit that the experience was pretty funny!Now to the reason why we were backtracking. We had come across a sign that said there was a bridge out 2 miles ahead due to the hurricane a couple years ago. The sign stated that we had 2 options: we could do a road walk detour for 1.5 miles or we could continue up the trail for 2 miles and risk a stream ford. Since we had passed a lot of south-bounders the past few days and no one mentioned a horrible stream crossing, we figured we'd continue up the trail and ford the stream. However, as we walked for about 10 minutes, we noticed that the creek was not getting any smaller nor any slower most likely due to all the rains we've had in the last week. We started to second-guess our decision, so we turned around and decided to do the 1.5-mile road walk. It was during this backtracking that Brakeman became intimately familiar with the low hanging branch. Shortly before the end of the road walk was a little picnic table area, so we stopped there for lunch. We were pleased to see a southbound hiker also coming down the road. He made the decision not to ford the stream as well and he actually got to see the crossing point when he made the decision. He shared with us that a hiker did do the ford the other day and reported that it was thigh deep. With our legs probably being shorter and our packs being butt level, our packs could have gotten wet, so we think we made the right decision. It will be interesting to hear if Josh & Amanda and Turtle & Snickers took the road detour or not.We've been looking at the itinerary into Daleville, which is about 3-4 days out, and there's really not a good method to lay it out so that we can hike through without a motel stay but still do reasonable miles each day. The way the plan is falling is a 15-mile hike into Daleville with a grocery store trip and then a 5-mile hike out to a place where we could camp or shelter. That makes a 20-mile day on terrain that does not look easy and with a grocery store trip, which is never a quick experience for us. So we're tentatively planning on a motel stay in Daleville. But between now and then who knows what could happen. There could be a severe afternoon thunderstorm causing us to duck into the shelter for an hour or two and that could throw our schedule off, so we're going to have to wing it. It's 8:00 and about 60 degrees inside the tent. We're tenting by ourselves at a camping site just south of Wind Rock at mile marker 652.3. I think we're going to call it a day. The miles are going quicker. The next 3 days are big ones. They're all 16-17 mile days followed by a 15-mile day into Daleville. The miles are ticking off. We'll try to have a low mileage day coming out of Daleville to give our bodies a bit of rest. Maine will still be there waiting for us. Goodnight from halfway to Daleville.