Date: 2017-06-18
From: HorseShoe trail junction

To: 501 Shelter
Miles today: 25.5
Weather: broken clouds

Last night was a bit interesting. I woke up at ~11 to something sniffing and shuffling around outside my tent... not what I wanted to deal with while camping alone. I got up and poked my head out of the tent, headlamp illuminating the night, and found 2 porqupines hanging around. Ok... Could be worse. I yelled at them and they waddled away, problem solved. Until they came back. And again.After the 3rd time I just gave up yelling at them as I drifted back to sleep. I woke up again at ~3am and had to close my rain fly due to some light rain and they were still hanging around, but they weren't doing anything... So, whatever?Morning eventually came and in packing up camp I found a single quill lodged in the loose end of my bear line. I'll take that as the porqupine seal of approval!I hit the trail at 720 to the sound of silence... no gunfire. It didn't take me long to cover the distance I had hiked back last night and start covering some new ground, and sure enough the trail took a 90deg turn as it came to whatever land the gunfire was happening on. I had figured that would happen, but wasn't worth the risk. However, at 8am, to the minute, the fire restarted, echoing through the woods. The trail was pretty easy, long, flat, and pretty straight, crossing various short rocky sections, but otherwise uneventful. Near the next shelter I hiked across some black soil and rock down, maybe something unique gelogically about this region? Just past the shelter I came to a trail reroute where a bridge across a stream had washed out. 2 excavators were on site to effect repairs, but were currently vacant. I headed down an embankment off of the road the trail had been following, down a very new trail that was obvious had been cleared very recently from the remains of brush and be stumps present. This new trail had me hop from boulder to boulder over a lively stream and then rejoined the AT a short distance later. I climbed up and then back down a mountain, crossed a couple of bustling roads, and took my lunch break at a stream which helped to mask some of the noise from the roads around me. With all these roads everywhere once I got off the mountain, I thought it interesting to see how topography constrains human infrastructure into valleys.I used a massive and very old steel truss bridge to cross a river and canal and then just up the gravel road crossed under I-81 (for the second and last time), the cars and trucks above me causing the bridge up hum as they crossed over. The trail headed back up onto a ridge that had alternating sections of extremely rocky, boulder-hopping terrain and super flat cruising terrain. While up here I started to here thunder in the distance and steeled myself for rain, but except for a sprinkle, it never arrived. The thundersun continued for a while but never arrived, perhaps a storm was visiting a nearby ridge, but I couldn't tell because of the dense foliage. The best part of the weird weather was it stirred up a bit of a breeze which cooled things off a little bit during the afternoon.The afternoon stretched on as the rocks came and went. I'm not really planning on doing a countdown, but I did pass the 1000mi-to-go mark, which is pretty exciting.I knew that my home for the night, 501 shelter, was just past a view, but once again AWOL and I had different ideas as to what constituted a view and several overlooks later I stumbled out onto the road for which the shelter was named. The shelter was just a bit farther, right next to the caretakers house. I arrived and set my stuff down as the caretaker was talking to a couple of hikers, MaryPoppins, and 2 others. They were just finishing eating a couple pizzas and offered me 2 slices, which I gladly accepted. The shelter was a large shed that contained bunks, a picnic table, and a HUGE domed skylight and the facility also had a solar shower and fresh water located outside, charging outlets on the side of the caretaker's house, and a portapotty (the cleanest I've ever seen).Feeling a little grungy compared to the other hikers who had arrived earlier, I headed for the shower. The shower was just a garden hose attached to an elevated barrel which had been painted black, but being located in the forest, the sun didn't have much of a chance to warm the water, so the shower was brisk. Unfortunately it seemed like my clothes were just as smelly as I was at this point, so given the lack of laundry facilities here, I decided to combine my chores and do my shower and laundry at the same time... with the hose.After cleaning up, I called down to the local pizza place and ordered pizza (since the shelter was only 0.1mi from the road) and they knew just where to deliver it. I couldn't quite finish the whole pizza (I blame having already eaten 2 slices earlier) so I saved a couple slices for breakfast and hit the hay as hiker midnight rolled around.