Date: 2005-05-31
From: Calf Mountain Shelter

To: Loft Mountain Campground
Miles today: 20.4
Weather: broken clouds

Today was a really good day to be on the Trail. The rain had stopped by morning. It had rained most of the night but it stopped in time for me to dry off my tent. I packed everything away pretty well.I slept pretty well last night but, I was still very tired this morning. I did NOT want to get up. I was awake at 5 o'clock. The sun starts rising then. I layed there until 6. I finally forced myself to get up and get packed. Vern and I walked out of there at 6:30 very casually. We pretty much took our time walking all morning long over some very forgiving, rolling terrain. We still did 13 miles by 11:30. We pulled into Blackrock Hut and sat there until 1 o'clock. During our long break, I cooked some Ramen Noodles and freeze-dried chicken. We hung out and dried out our shoes because we had been walking through long wet grass.We sat there waiting on Easy Goer. Just as we were about to leave, he walked in. We were ready to give up on him. Easy Goer showed up and we took off again.We had another 7.4 miles to do to get into Loft Mountain Campground where Draft Runner was supposed to meet us with the mail drops we had missed in Waynesboro.We are deep into Shenandoah National Park now. We crossed SkyLine several times a day, sometimes every half hour. You can hear cars go by all the time. There's no lack of reminders that we are close to civilization now. So, we all left Blackrock Hut together. A few minutes after we left, I decided to start walking at a faster pace than OC1 and Easy Goer, so I took off ahead of them. I did that 7.4 miles in less than 2 hours. The last 4 miles I clocked myself, I did 4 miles in 53 minutes, which is about as fast as I can walk without breaking into a run. I got in about 20 minutes ahead of them. I went right to the camp store there. I got a 6 pack of Budweiser and some wheat bread, ham, Swiss cheese and mayo. I sat on the bench with Just Bob and proceeded to eat and relax and wait for the guys to show up. They showed up at around 3:30 or so. They got in and got stuff to eat from the store. I'm sure they are regretting packing so much food. I tried to give them advice on not packing so much while going through Shenandoah because we will be stopping at all the way sides every day. They got crazy with the food at Wal Mart 2 days ago and now they have to carry it. They certainly will not go hungry. I didn't know that there was a wayside at Loft Mountain also. I thought I had told Draft Runner to meet me at the store, but there was a little bit of confusion, so we split up. They guys headed down to the wayside, where supposedly they had hot sandwiches and burgers. I sat there waiting for Draft Runner. A few minutes after they left, I realized that was stupid, because all I had to do was go into the store and tell the man there that there was a gal coming with stuff for us and that we were at the wayside. So that's what I did. I threw my pack back on, and started down to the wayside. Half way down, Draft Runner rode up. I jumped in her car and we rode back to the wayside. They were not serving anything cooked there. They had a majot power failure yesterday. So the guys had to settle for cold sandwiches. We went in and I ordered a milkshake and a beer. The girl there told me that it was the first time she ever had that combination of an order before. We got our mail drops, Draft Runner sat with us for a little while. She's getting so excited now because she's getting back on the Trail on the 10th in New Hampshire to finish off her hike. She will be done with her hike of the AT before we will.She took off and we proceeded to look for a camp site that was hidden so we wouldn't have to pay the rediculous $16 fee that they wanted to set up a tent. We sat down with all our goodies, sorted out our mail drops. I got a new pair of trail shoes and a water filter in this mail drop. Both were well needed; especially the shoes. My other ones are falling apart. Vern finally has cell phone reception. He's so excited, like a little boy. He's been calling people all night, I can still hear him. He must have called 10 people tonight already. It's getting dark, it's about 9 o'clock. I intend on getting real good sleep tonight. I have been lacking sleep the 2 days that I was at Draft Runner's house. I stayed up until 1 or 2 in the morning and got up at 5.It probably contributed to my grouchiness. The last journals were short and done in a few minutes. I'm going to regret losing the detail of the days because they were wonderful days. That's the way it goes sometimes.