Date: 2008-04-21
From: matt's creek shelter

To: puncbowl shelter
Miles today: 12.7
Weather: light rain

Well, it rained all night last night again. Guess we were lucky on that. Good roof on the shelter. Dawdled a little since we were only a couple miles to the road crossing where we were going to resupply.The trail followed the creek we were on for a bit. Would have been awesome for a swim if it was warmer. Then we came across the James River and walked along it for a mile. Broad river with no boats winding through the valleys, picturesque.We came to the James River foot bridge. This is the longest foot only bridge on the trail and crosses the entire river. Looks like it may have used old railroad pylons, but the bridge itself was built for foot traffic. After the bridge was the road to Glasgow.Took a while to get a hitch here. Bad Humus tried for the first 15 minutes with no luck. Then Toddy went out and flagged the third car. Wonder if that is because Humus looks like a terrorist. Pickup; Humus rode in the back.Hit town and took care of the chores. Humus got some packages and we resupplied at the Dollar General. Good and cheap as always.I sent home most of my winter gear today; the stuff that I didn't need to swap with my MIA package. Turned out to be 6lbs. Very awesome, that's an incredible amount of weight to a hiker. Here is what I remember sending: down coat, long underwear top and bottom, winter mitts, nalgenes, down booties, and the last of my maps that I've been done with for a bit.Everything I sent home I haven't used in a while, or can easily do without. The nalgenes were replaced by PowerAde bottles, nalgenes are very heavy. I will miss using the down coat as a pillow, it was very nice.Before we left town, we had to eat somewhere. We came across a small restaurant that had a small buffet laid out. Score. Everything was home cooked, no processed stuff. Double score. Excellent cheap place to eat. The only downside is we didn't eat our fill since we had a lot of climbing to do out of town with full packs. We have all learned our lesson on this one. Chilled there for a bit watching the rain and abusing the privy until we decided we should probably hit it.Back to the road. Another tough hitch. Eventually a guy with a single cab pickup pulled over, and said he had room for one. Humus hopped in since he rode in back last. Well, it was a pickup but he had a short work box on it. It had a floor that was about a foot below the top of the cab. Toddy and I hopped up there and hung on for dear life as he flew up the winding mountain road back to the trail.Back to the trail with full packs and full bellies; this always means the same thing: there is a big climb looming. Flat along another creek for a bit then a shelter we took a quick break at. Then the uphill started. 1400 feet to the first level off, and it was a steep bugger. At least it was cool and cloudy. Still had beads of sweat dripping off my face and we all agreed we didn't like this climb with less than pleasant words. Got to the top of the first step and showed the mountain our disdain as we usually do. Then onward for a little flat before the next climb.Another steep climb followed by some flat in preparation for the next climb. During this time the weather was trying to decide what it wanted to do. Started raining, stopped, was foggy, lifted, got some sun and blue sky, then more rain. Every ten minutes it was something else. Of course this was a joy to us, hikers love wearing rain gear especially when it isn't raining. Oh well, part of the trail.Last climb of the day was another Bluff mountain. Finished off our series of climbs at 3300 feet from a low of 800 at the river. Not bad with full packs. There was an odd plaque on the top of the mountain. It said something to the effect of a 5 year old child wandered up to the top of the mountain while looking for firewood to heat his school. He froze to death up there. This was in 1891. He was also 7 miles from his school. Very odd, noone knew why he went up there.Good views from the top. The clouds were swirling around the mountain. We could actually see them rapidly moving and changing shape in the winds hitting the hill. Really sweet, caught a video of it.Downward to the shelter. Threatening rain once again so we booked it in. One flip flopper here, The Foot Machine.We realized today that we haven't seen a NOBO thru-hiker besides the boys since Damascus. Really odd. No biggie though, at least I'm not traveling solo anymore.Belated shout out to Brakeman and Grasshopper. Thanks for the info on Daleville, good stuff. Hopefully we will run into you guys in the next week or so.I'm going to try to end with a "Only on the AT" from now on. I'll see how it goes.Only on the AT are you wetter wearing raingear than if you didn't put it on.