Date: 2012-06-15
From: Hurricane Mtn Shelter

To: VA 670 Campsite
Miles today: 13.0

Three New FriendsWell, after some soul searching, I have decided to make tomorrow my last day of hiking for 2012. Surprisingly I am not sad at this.  That will be 138.6 miles instead of the planned 237.6 miles. There are several reasons for this decision. First, I made a mistake of having Fat Grandma park my truck at the Mt . Rogers Headquarters parking lot to allow me to resupply. I will be walking out of the woods tomorrow into a parking lot with my truck in it and that will be hard to leave and hike onward. Also, the trail has been a lonely place this year. With Fat Grandma getting sick and going home, it has been hard to hike so much alone. I haven't been able to make any real new friends. Heck I don't even know the trail names of the three boys because they keep to themselves so much. I don't see them all day except for briefly when we pass each other or quickly set up camp before collapsing at night.  Most others I talk briefly too are headed in the opposite direction. Rumor and trail logs note I am too far behind or ahead of several groups of hikers and sadly I won't line up with them during those possible remaining seven days of hiking. I really wasn't mentally prepared to hike this much alone. Then there is the fact that I can't get ANY cell phone service. Not even enough to get out a text message. No contact from home for this long has been emotionally trying. Also, it keeps resurfacing in my mind that Dave is at home running our business all alone. Usually that works well but we have been extremely busy as of late and that is much harder to do alone. I really should be there to help.  Finally, the number of days between making it into a town is much longer on this part of the trail so you are out on the trail for a longer stretch at a time.  That is another thing I wasn't mentally prepared for. so, I think I've had enough fun this year, time to go home. So, that decided, I need to get to the VA 670 Campsite today so I can get to the Ranger Station on time on Saturday before they close the gates.  And I don't really know what time that is. So I left camp at 9:30 am. The three boys were making their plans to go into Troutdale for resupply today.  They'd heard there wasn't a good food source there so their backup plan was to go into Marion. And they had to do it all by hitch hiking. Before leaving camp, I asked them their trail names: Houdini, Ewok, and Jay Bird. It was a nice hike but I never saw ANYONE. Comers Creek was cool and was the only notable thing until we stopped for lunch at Trimpi Shelter about 3:30. We'd had trouble finding water today and were glad to find water here. Houdini and Ewok came in right behind me. Houdini had just seen a huge bear on the way in to the shelter which means I just missed it out on the trail!!! Whew! They had both gone into town having trouble getting a ride. They found no food, never found Jay Bird, and had come back to the trail. They were going to the same campsite I was. The hike to that camp again was not exciting in any way, very boring, and again I hiked alone except for my trusty buddy Bandit! We arrived at 8:00 pm with no water and the spring here was dry. Yikes! Houdini and Ewok were here and we were all getting worried about  Jay Bird. Jay Bird finally showed up before dark with an awesome story hitch hiking all the way into Marion, shopping, eating, and looking for his friends. Ewok went 3/4 of a mile back down the trail for water for everyone and we all made sure he had a good dinner and set up his tent and got a fire started. We all sat around the fire late getting to know each other better. It was really cool, I was finally getting to know them and now I was going to leave the trail.  I volunteered to give them Trail Magic tomorrow and drive them to town. They were thrilled. Nice end to an otherwise lonely day, I now had made three new friends.