Date: 2016-06-10
From: Sinking Creek Valley

To: Miller Cove Road
Miles today: 18.9
Weather: clear sky

Yellow Blazed - 669.6 (Va. 601, Rocky Gap)Starting Point - 675.0 (Va. 42, Sinking Creek Valley)Ending Point - 693.9 (Miller Cove Road) There are several terms that thru-hikers use to describe taking shortcuts on the trail. Following white blazes means you are following the trail. Following any other colored blaze would mean you were not on the trail. Blue blazes sometimes indicate side trails. Aqua blazing refers to people who take canoes thru Shenandoah valley instead of hiking the mountains. Yellow blazing refers to taking a car and skipping a section. That is exactly what we had to do today. We drove past the place where we stopped yesterday and picked up the hike 5.4 miles down the trail. We did this for safety reasons. Rocky Gap Road was a very steep, narrow, windy, potholed, treacherous road and we had no interest in risking it in our Toyota Corolla. For those of you worried that we won't hit all 2178+/- miles, rest assured we have banked over 5 extra miles in sections of the trail that we have hiked twice this year, such as the Grayson Highlands section and portions of the Virginia Creeper trail. In fact, we even hiked an extra 15 mile section that was closed due to a fire and then reopened later but the conservancy advised hikers to skip. So today we cashed in some of those miles we had banked and used them to avoid a safety hazard. On the way to the trail, we saw a really cool historic covered bridge. One of the advantages of slackpacking is that you see so much of small town America driving to the trailheads. Porter picked up a delicious cantaloupe from a nearby farmers stand, which we gladly shared with hungry hikers at Miller Cove Road. On the trail, Sherpa ran into lots of hikers we know. The first was Derby. He was looking better after the bout of sickness. He shared that several others hikers all got sick the same time as him and they all shared a pipe. He was now convinced that the drug use got him sick and was not going to share anymore. Sherpa also saw another girl who was sick. The guy with her was carrying her pack in addition to his own. Sweet memories of the time Sherpa carried Porter's pack. Sherpa offered to carry the extra pack seeing as he had none but the guy declined, too macho to accept assistance. Then he saw Giggles again! Giggles is the fastest hiker that makes little progress that we know. We couldn't hope to keep up with him with packs on, but somehow he is always behind us. Thankfully, when we met for lunch, Giggles walked by and got to catch up with Porter as well. We even saw spaceman toady. Last time we saw him was in Smokies. We also met a new hiker named "Kernel", a retired military Colonel whose sister misspelled his rank one too many times. He never backpacked before hiking the AT! He decided to hike it 2 weeks before he started. Needless to say, he was every outfitters dream come true. He walked into REI and bought the store! Tonight we car camped near the trail in Miller Cove. We setup our backpacking tent with an air mattress inside. It felt like cheating! It sounded like a good idea but the air mattress partially deflated during the night.