Date: 2017-04-09
From: Broken Fiddle Hostel, Damascus, VA

To: Lost Mountain Shelter, VA
Miles today: 15.9
Weather: clear sky

4/9/17 Lost Mountain Shelter, VAMiles hiked: 485.0, Miles to go: 1704.8Today's hike started out good, got better during the day, and ended up awesome this evening. I woke up about 7:00 AM and discovered that 1st Sgt was already up and showered. We headed out a little before 8:00 AM and found out that Hummingbird, Ramsey Bolton, Courtney, and Sitting Bull were heading to In the Country Cafe for breakfast. It was right on the AT, so we joined them. The food was pretty good; but, the service was slow. So, it was almost 9:30 AM before 1st Sgt and I got started hiking. We either hiked on or next to the Virginia Creeper Rail Trail most of the day. It was a beautiful sunny day, with temperatures reaching almost 80 degrees. It's hard to believe that two days ago we were hiking in Winter. We still had all the post-town day elements to deal with: heavy pack, belly full of town food, and mostly uphill hiking all day. But, it was such a beautiful day and such a beautiful region that we had a great hike. We stopped at Saunders Shelter for lunch, where we met a thru hiker named Uncle Heather. He was a fairly flamboyant man with fading green hair (St Patrick's Day?) whose claim to fame appears to be winning several drag queen pageants in Baltimore. He was a fairly interesting man. I did finally find out about Alexa from him (remember her from the very beginning of the trail?). She is now going by the trail name McFlurry and is about four days ahead of us. We came upon a neat pond in the woods and spent several minutes watching small fish and the biggest, fattest tadpoles I've ever seen in my life. These things were four inches long! Some of them had developed their back legs. It was so cool!We continued to plod up the trail toward Lost Mountain Shelter. Both of us were feeling a little tired; but, were really enjoying the day. I think the 40 degree change in temperature was really wearing us down, though. At one point, we stopped for water and our conversation went something like this:1st Sgt: "No one ever thinks about routine things like filtering water when they think about hiking".Me: "Yeah, I know what you mean"Him: "It's like Gilligan's Island - they always have water".Me: "Yeah, you pretty much have to suspend disbelief with Gilligan's Island".Him: "Like Wrongway Feldman".Me: "Or the musical group that left them there because they thought the women would be too much competition".Him: "Yeah, or the..."Me: "Um, Sarge, wait... Consider this - Bo has only been gone a day and we've reverted to conversations about Gilligan's Island".Him: "Ha, ha, ha. Well, I guess we know who the true intellectual is".We arrived at the Lost Mountain Shelter around 6:00 pm. Uncle Heather and two women section hikers were the only people there. We were kind of surprised. We expected to see all the rest of the group here. As we were setting up our tents, Courtney came bouncing into camp with a slack pack. Her parents had come to visit and were bringing her regular pack to the shelter. It was located only a mile from the road. When her parents arrived, along with her pack, they brought pizza, sodas, chips, bananas, and brownies. Score! We all ate until we were stuffed. I contributed the blonde brownies that Marguerite had sent me to the party. Unfortunately, I did not manage to reduce the weight of my food bag much. Pretty soon Hummingbird and Sitting Bull arrived and joined the party. It was great fun. In the end several other thru hikers and section hikers arrived and made a mini tent city. To top off the evening, Hummingbird produces a cribbage board. He totally skunked me; but, it was great fun. We are now sitting around a campfire telling ghost stories under a full moon. Virginia has been great so far and we haven't even seen the ponies yet.