Date: 2011-10-03
From: David Lesser Shelter

To: Day 145 - 151
Miles today: 84.2

(So, for some reason, journaling was just not a priority while I was hiking south. I have nothing but an abstract collection of notes, memories, scraps of paper, and facebook posts from this 2-week period. In light of this, it's pointless for me to try to come up with an accurate day-by-day account. So here are the highlights: )   I start off my southbound trek by doing a little 12-mile jaunt to the Bears Den Hostel. I hit the hostel on a good night because there happened to be a little gathering of old long-time trail angels who have been helping AT hikers to some capacity for most of their lives. They cook a huge Thanksgiving-style dinner and are happy to share it with me because I'm the only thru-hiker there that night. I spend the rest of the night trying to subdue food-coma, chatting with the old-timers, and messing around with the internet.   The next morning I leave the Bears Den, glance at my guidebook, and notice that I only have 996.9 miles of AT left, triple digits baby! I feel charged from meeting all of those awesome people the night before, all of the good home-cooked food that I ate, and the fact that I've got less than 1,000 miles to go. I really pick up the pace and proceeded to start hiking 20 miles a day minimum. I do 40 miles over 2 days until I get to Compton Gap. I try to hop-off for a night to check out this Terrapin Station Hostel in Front Royal, VA but the hostel closed for the season back in July. I hike on at a determined pace and go another 2 days until I see another sole. This is the longest stretch I've ever gone without seeing another hiker. This SoBo experience is definitely a lot more lonely than northbounding ever was. It's also kind of surreal going back through all of the log books at the shelters. I can literally flip through any log book and come across dozens of names that I recognize. It's funny seeing what all of my old NoBo friends were doing when they were here months ago. And, as I get further in to my hike, the the log entries get earlier and earlier in to my friends' hikes. What a trip.    Finally, just before I make it to the Elkwallow Wayside, a hiker named Mr. Z catches up to me while I had stopped to chat with Belle for a while. Mr. Z is a school teacher in his late 50's who is built like a Japanese martial artist. He carries himself like a Zen master too; very quiet and mental. And when he does talk his words always seem to be meaningful and profound and take me a little while to decipher. Him and I get to know each other while we stop for lunch, electricity, and sit-up toilets at the Elkwallow Wayside. This entire section of AT thru the Shenandoah National Park literally parallels the Skyline Drive Scenic Byway all the way till we exit the park and enter the Blueridge Mountains. Even though it sucks having to listen to cars and cross Skyline Dr. over and over again, it does come with its perks. Skyline has a number of these little waysides for bikers and tourists who payed the $15 to drive through the park to stop for lunch. There, one can pay inflated prices for little nick-knacks and what is essentially glorified gas-station food. This may be a ripoff for the tourists, but it's a godsend for us hikers. Mr. Z and I have such a pleasant experience at Elkwallow that the next day we just hike another 20 miles miles and pass the Skyland Resort. This place is a little bit nicer that your typical Wayside. They actually have an up-scale lodge and resort for guests to stay over-night. It boasts a full-service restaurant and a stone deck that looks out over the mountains. Mr. Z and I are waiting in line to be seated when a group of German tourists approach us. They can tell that we don't quite fit-in with the other guests so they inquire about our journey. When we tell them that we've been living in the woods for like 5 months and have hiked almost 1,300 miles consecutively, they slip us some money and offer to pay for our meal. If I had known that food would be this easy to come by in the Shenny's, I wouldn't have packed out any food at all from Harper's! The terrain is mild here in this section, the scenery is beautiful, the re-supplies are easy. This is really super good trail-livin' as far as I'm concerned.