Date: 2009-05-29
From: Calf Mtn Shelter, VA

To: Blackrock Hut, VA
Miles today: 13.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Cell minimum (unreliable)OG notesWe are officially in the Shenandoah National Park. We passed a sign early this morning that states the park backcountry rules. We also crossed Skyline Drive 4 times and we could see the road a lot of the day.This park allows us more opportunities to sleep in our tent than the Smokies did. Most of the huts have tent sites in their vacinity. We will be using the tent more because the bugs are coming alive. The tent has a screen body and a waterproof fly that goes over it.I'm still disappointed in my hiking ability. I would love to be able to hike the mountains with less huffing and puffing. We are making decent time as we hike but I always want to do better. As a second timer I should know better but I still want to go farther each day. As my friend Posey Picker would say "It's about the smiles, not the miles." I am smiling and I still enjoy hiking the AT.C6 notesThe humidity has been quite high over these past couple days. A thunderstorm blew through very quickly not long after we arrived at the shelter. Unfortunately, we had decided to set up our tent because when we got here it was sunny, hot, and VERY buggy. The thunderstorm came on very fast and hard soon after we set up our tent. Thankfully, everything in our tent stayed dry and we were in the shelter during the storm so we stayed dry. The rain did help me rinse out my backpack. While we were hiking today my butt started to feel wet. When we investigated, we found my Camelback had sprung a pinhole leak! It must have been leaking for a while because a lot of my stuff was wet and my butt was soaking wet. I had to rinse off everything that got wet because we put Propel in my Camelback. Propel is sweet, so we think mice or other animals would like it if we left it on everything. To be safe, I rinsed everything, and the pouring rain helped me rinse out my backpack. Thank goodness for dry sacks and zip lock bags. The things that needed to stay dry were dry...just the zip lock bags and outside of the dry sacks were wet and needed to be rinsed.Once the storm blew over the sun came back out and dried all the bags. My clothes are still damp, but they'll dry as we walk tomorrow.It was just Red Leg and us at the shelter for quite a while, so we enjoyed each other's company and planned our next few days of hiking. By the way, shelters are called huts in the Shenandoah National Park...same type of building as shelters, just a different name for them. I don't know why. Other folks started arriving after we finished our dinners, so the shelter will be full tonight most likely. We seem to be in a big group again now. This group hikes big miles though, so they may go out ahead of us quickly. They zeroed in Waynesboro yesterday. Some of the others here tonight are Zoltan, Bison, Goof, Mr. Buffalo Man, Sun nuke and Mississippi. We think the twins (Newt and Miss Scarlett) may be here later because they were in town yesterday, too. There are two section hikers here as well. We're starting to see more section hikers. The Shenandoah National Park is a very popular place to hike (and nice hiking terrain, too).Old Goat & Check Six