Date: 2005-05-08
From: Black Horse Gap, BRP Mile 97.7

To: US 11
Miles today: 12.1

Today is Sunday May eighth, Mother's Day. When I finally woke up in the morning it was like seven fifteen. So get up get ready. Get coffee for Terry. I had toast and some orange juice. Found out how to get on the Blue Ridge Parkway, went looking for the trail down here near Troutville.  Found it but there's no parking spot so we said we'll add another .6 miles. And we parked down on US 11, right at the city limits of Troutville. A nice little parking spot there. Now we got back, came back up, got on the Blue Ridge Parkway and drove and drove and we said, oh my God, can you imagine walking back to our car, but here we are. We went to Black Horse gap. And that should be 12.1 miles today. And we got on a trail it 10:05am. And at eleven o five we were at the first shelter, Wilson Creek shelter, at 2.4 miles. Course the trail was just fantastic. Down and for the most part very gentle, no big rocks on the trail, we loved it. Still stopped and spent twenty minutes at Shelter reading and redoing our feet, trying to help save them. Oh yeah, between when we got on the trail and the shelter we saw seven guys, two of them, we think were thru hikers. Well the one we know, we stopped and asked who he was, and his trail name is Michigan, from Michigan of course. At the shelter there was a journal entry from this morning, from a guy who wrote his trail name was Bedhead. That's all a guess. We left the shelter, went down the Wilson creek, did what they say, 0.7 miles in fifteen minutes. Now after that, you start going up after a couple of little creeks. And now we're looking for the Curry Creek.  We're at Curry Creek and its five miles, and it took us two and a half hours to get here. We met up with a guy. Turns out I had seen him. He was in the office at the Econolodge this morning around seven thirty. He's out section hiking and taking like seven years to get all the way up to here , but he's out for a big hike this time from Pearisburg up to Harpers Ferry but he says he doesn't have a trail name yet. Didn¢t want one. Didn¢t want to give himself one, didn't want one. I don't know what I'll say about him. He was very nice. We said we might see you again. Got up to the road at 1:10pm. So it was three hours and five minutes to do 5.8 miles. It was a good climb there at the end but we kept on and we came straight up it! So we got our tarp out and found the best place we could, it wasn't shady as we like, but sat down and we proceeded to have lunch, took our shoes off. I was working on our shoes and lunch and at least one guy came by and we just said hi. He walked on then the second guy came by and he stopped and he was extra friendly when we said hello. He stopped and then we started talking to him and he went on and on and on and he was very sociable had a lot of neat things to say. He was a young guy. Turns out I think he's from Atlanta. He had stayed behind at the shelter to call his mother on Mother's Day which was very nice of him except he was saying he was covering his bases so he would have a place to go home to and a dinner. He says he's on the trail and he started in Damascus. I don't know how long ago but he's got until August 17th. He'll see how far he and one of his buddies that are hiking together get. Anyhow he's going out August 17th to Wyoming to a dude ranch to work and he had been out skiing somewhere out in the Rockies about a month or so ago. He had a good time out there so he is just enjoying life to the fullest. He just talked and talked, I don't remember what we all talked about. His trail name was Wildturkey. 55 minutes later, 2:05pm we got up to leave and here a gal and her black lab came walking up the road so we stopped and talked to her for a couple of minutes. We petted the lab named Cocoa. Then we went on up. At first the trail was fairly level but it was really closed in, a lot of Azalea bushes and different things kind of right by you. Finally after a while we came to a road, an old road which was the fire road. Beautiful road, grass growing on it with one path and we walked on that for a fairly good ways in fact I think we're still kind on it and here at 3:25pm. we got to the Full Hard Knob shelter. So we're sitting here enjoying it, probably take a short break and then 3 miles down to our car. We stayed there twenty minutes, seems like we didn't do anything, didn¢t take off our shoes, terry did go to the bathroom, but twenty minutes and we're heading down. Just a beautiful trail, twenty minutes down we came across a young couple with their baby on the guys back. And then kept going, seems like we passed a couple more guys. Just said hi. What did the trail do? Finally come around the corner of that mountain and you could see the gap and another knob.  Went around and then went down to the gap. And then the next mt we just go around it. Which was really really sweet. And then it just kept going down and finally a sign that said the next 0.6 miles of land was private. Stay on the trail. And then right after that we saw this guy sitting on the trail. He said it¢s a beautiful day. We come down to a pasture stile. Across the little Mountain Pass Road and then they take it straight up a mountain. They take you straight up to a big bald pasture with a big wide swath cut thru, and they take you right down again, but you do get some great views up there. Then Terry went over another stile and I went under, because one strand of barbwire pieces was cut. And then you just come on down and before you know it, there's a railroad track, then you're out to the car, and it was 5:35 at the car. Oh and then a couple were just sitting here trying to cool off, it was the couple that we saw way up there. Coming back, they didn't make it to the shelter, but they had a good workout and it was a Great Mothers day for them. Now we're going to call Terry¢s mom.