Date: 2003-06-08
From: US 522

To: US 522
Miles today: 5.0

So we stopped in an outfitter last night on the way home at the mall. Very crowded mall. Very scary. I asked for several things but I just ended up getting two pairs of liner socks. It wasn¢t a very good outfitter. They didn¢t have stuff that people on the AT would use. They basically had standard, city peoples outfitting stuff for a weekend warrior type of stuff¢¦and then we headed to Mark and Jan¢s house and I started unpacking and throwing my gear in the wash. At the mall Mark had bought 2 really good, expensive cigars for each of us. Jan went ahead and cooked us up some New York strips and mashed potatoes and broccoli and all kinds of good food and we sat around and ate. We went out on the back porch and listened to some 60¢s anthems and drank way too much. Mark¢s favorite drink is Sambuca and he probably drank 2/3¢s of bottle and I had gotten some whiskey sour mix and Old Granddad and did my best to knock it off as well as I could. At some point, Mark ended up basically calling it a night. I went down to try and finish my laundry and then I went back upstairs and got into bed and woke up around 6:30 this morning. Kind of lazed around in bed for awhile but finally got up and went down to try and finish my laundry. Mark got up about the same time. Jan got up and made some breakfast. Scrambled eggs, bacon, really good biscuits. Right after that I rushed around and tried to finish my packing because we were going to go kayaking and immediately after that they were going to have to take me back to the trail. So, we managed to get everything done. Get the kayak loaded up, put on Jan¢s truck and Marks car and hauled it to Mason something or other. Remind me, I¢ve got to ask what the name of the place was again. But it was¢¦I think it was a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. Very still, calm waters for the most part. Light wind with a lot of wildlife. We saw a bald eagle. A lot of ospreys. A lot of different kinds of birds flying around. We kind of paddled very gently. It was very sedate. We paddled gently for a few hours. Pulled over to a piece of land and ate lunch. Some hoagies. Then we headed back towards the house. We had to stop over at the CVS pharmacy real quick and K-mart because I had to get some more moleskin I was out of the stuff. So, I got some moleskin and some little, mini ??? for some set up I was doing with a tarp. We hauled it back to the house and I finished packing up my stuff and they took me back and dumped me back off over here by the AT , by 522, over close to Front Royal and here I am walking once again. The elevation started low at 1163 from where they dropped me off. So, I knew I was gonna do some climbing. It hasn¢t really been that bad. It got to about 2050. Still a climb of about a 1000 feet but it took a couple miles to do that. Very gradual trail. Very muddy as well. I managed to get my boots wet right away again. The cool thing is that the first mile and a half or so, oh at about 1400 feet, both sides of the trail were just covered, absolutely coverd with strawberries. They were tiny little ones at this point. But, you could tell they were going to get bigger. I pulled one out. Just to taste test it. I bit into it, swished it around in my mouth, spit it out and then washed my mouth out. Just in case I was wrong. It was almost tasteless. It was too small. The biggest one was about the size of a large garbonzo bean. So, I image they¢re not ripe enough to be sweet yet. But they were beautiful and the trail was absolutely covered with them. I just passed a sign that said I am 2 miles from the Denton Shelter which translates to about 20¢¦about a 40 minutes walk and it¢s 5:55 now. So, about 6:40 or so I should be walking in there. I¢ve seriously been considering continuing walking tonight and going on to Linden, Virginia because that¢s only 3.2 miles past the shelter and I do have a mail drop I have to pick up first thing in the morning. I figure I can save some time. But, I really don¢t know if that¢s gonna save any time or whatever because I also don¢t know the conditions around Linden and if they were they way that they were coming up out of 522 to Front Royal everything is too dense and overgrown to set up a hammock. So, basically, I¢ll just get to the shelter here and find out what the hell I want to do. I had a good time today. It was relaxing and it was nice to hang out with them again. I was glad for it. Basically, it turns out as a zero day. Although, I did making a 5 and change today and I made 14 yesterday. Still translates to 20-21. Which is what I¢ve been trying to keep. So, somewhere in there I wasted a day. It wasn¢t really wasted.