Date: 2004-04-17
From: Va. 16, Partnership Shelter

To: Va. 601
Miles today: 4.0

We are Terry and Cindy from Illinois. Let me apologize in advance for the poor transcribing of the 2004 journals. We worked from very poor quality audio tapes.We are going back to the A/T in 2004. We love day hiking, driving back roads, eating well, and hot showers. Our conditioning is better this year, so we are hoping to do 2 week trips to the trail. We drive to Virginia on April 16th and pick up a rental car for shuttling. Then we drive to Sugargrove, Va. Its Saturday April 17th, we are at the Konnarocks Crew work center (also home to Piedmont Appalachian trail club) right outside of Sugargrove, Virginia on Hwy 601. We have volunteered to do trail maintenance Sat and Sun. We got here about 6:30 last night, and it's suppertime. They feed us, we had spaghetti and pound cake for dessert, and wine, and it was great. We have a nice night camping in our minivan at Konnarock. I woke up about 5:36 this morning, couldn't go back to sleep.  We got up at 6:15 am, and went to breakfast at a diner in Sugar Grove, it cost $8.15. We came back to the Crew center. Decided to leave a car at the trailhead on Route 601 and took the other car around to the Mount Rogers Headquarters on Virginia Highway 16. The gates were locked, so we had to park on VA 16 at the trailhead. We hiked in to met the trail crew back at the Partnership shelter, and proceeded down the trail to do some trail maintenance. We learned all about check dams and water bars and how to use the shovel and the Pulaski pick. We worked quite a bit with Carol from New York. We had lunch on the trail with the crew and learned a lot about their club. We worked about 30 minutes after lunch with the trail crew. We then proceeded on down the trail to where our car was parked at Virginia 601. We took along tools to clean water bars all the way down to highway 601. We stopped and talked to a number of thru-hikers including Box top, Packrat and Trail lite. Further on we talk to a mother-daughter hiking team, Feather and Wings, who are from New Hampshire and started March 7th. Another hiker said his name was the Mad German and it's amazing how you get a trail name. It's a warm day and we have on our long trail pants for working. The trail had some ups and downs and a rocky knob to cross. It was after 1:00 when we left all the crew on the trail, and about 3:10pm when we got to our car on VA 601. We came down off the mountain, drove into town, and got a ice cream at McDonalds. We drove north on interstate-81 to highway 622, which ends 1/2 mile from the Mount Rogers headquarters where we left our other car. We went back to the Piedmont trail Club headquarters and sat around talking with crew members tell 5 o'clock, then took a nice shower at the clubhouse. We are work/hiking tomorrow with the Piedmont Trail crew, Billy and Bobby, on another section of the trail they maintain. Its a nice bonus to get 4 Appalachian Trail miles today. Some club member made a lasagna and there were salads and side dishes and desserts (brownies) and wine again, delicious. Then we helped load up the truck with all the work gear for tomorrows projects and that was it for the night. So we car camped again here at Konnarock.