Date: 2005-06-11
From: Waynesboro, VA (a zero day)

To: mile 861.5
Miles today: 12.0

Packed up and gone by 9:30 this morning. We were not in any rush so we decided to stay for the Motels Continental Breakfast. Nothing fancy but, it was filling and the coffee was good. A gentleman by the name of Preston Hadley dropped us off at the trail. This was a friend of Gozar's father. Gozar lived in this area when he was younger and his father asked him to look up his friend while he was in town. A nice man.       We were dropped off at the same phone booth where Gozar and I met. I dropped my pack on to the ground, turned around and Blue Angel was running at me from no where. She jumped in to my arms and gave me a big bear hug. She and cloth Monkey just stopped in for some supplies there (it was a small store) and were just about to leave for the trail. These two people I have known from the beginning of this thru-hike. We all wound up hiking together for a few days after that. I introduced them to Gozar and the four of us headed North shortly there after.   While in town my wife Brenda asked me to send her a "love letter". Now to tell you the truth I am not good at those kind of things however, I am good at being me. I sent her a "Virginia is for lovers" post card that I bought at this store and put a big letter L on the back of it. That was my way of sending a love letter, one letter, an L. Over the next few months I sent her the O, V, and E. Each letter had a personal meaning to it and I explained them to her as she received them. When I was finished with my form of "love letter", she told me it was the best love letter she ever got.   It was a short day but we still covered 12 miles that day. We ended up camping at a level area just off the trail at about mile 861.5. My first night under my tarp section of my tent, I soon found out my mistake of not having my net portion of my tent. Blue Angle and Cloth Monkey shared a tarp and the next day I asked how they handled it. Cloth Monkey had a upper body size head net while Blue Angel had none. She was constantly being disturbed by the bugs and whenever she moved to swat them away, it woke Cloth Monkey. The two of them did not sleep well at night either. Cloth Monkey was also one of those hikers who used a wood burning stove to cook his food. I remember seeing it earlier on the trail. He would gather small sticks and put them in his stove, burn the sticks down to a coal bed and cook on it. Interesting, I said to myself, it was light weight and all but, not a stove for me (too time consuming).   Another interesting point of interest. We entered the Shenandoah National Park just a few miles back at a place called "Jarman Gap". What a beautiful park this turned out to be. We only had about another 130 miles to go before we left the state of Virginia. Even sooner then that both Cloth Monkey and Blue Angel were leaving the trail for a planned stop. Blue Angel had family in the area and they promised to return to the trail soon after. In a few days they did leave and I never heard from them again. It is as if they simply disappeared. This bummed me out big time. Even other hikers like Fig and Just Visiting lost contact with them. These four were friends as well (from the very beginning). Gozar also left before we finished VA but he returned, we saw and hiked with each other further on up the trail.