Date: 2019-05-22
From: Lost Mountain Shelter

To: Thomas Knob Shelter
Miles today: 12.3
Weather: clear sky

I woke up at a reasonable time today too, but everyone was gone. It was completely deserted. Lol bye! I know I¢ve talked about my schedule a million times and how I sleep late and get to camp late, yadda yadda, but I¢ve been trying to fix that for weeks, so after a certain point I¢m beginning to accept my late starts. I don¢t like it, but I¢m just so tired in the morning. I wake up feeling like a zombie. My body doesn¢t want to move and I just feel bleh. I¢m sure coffee would help, but I don¢t want to get back on coffee. It¢s annoying. I feel like I can never get enough rest for what I¢m doing to my body. I think I¢d have to go to bed at 8, but if I woke up itching and couldn¢t sleep even going to bed later, I certainly wouldn¢t have stayed asleep going to bed at 8. I know my schedule can be entirely my own on the trail and I don¢t have to get up at 6:30 to do this trail. But with the heat and bugs getting worse and worse, earlier in the morning is better. We¢ll see if I can turn around my schedule. I just wanna sleep forever. Ugh! I went to get my bear bag and took a picture. I was really quite proud. It was my best bear bag hang by far. There was a privy, so that was a nice bonus. Someone had written the entire Lorax book on the walls of the privy. I speak for the poop? I ate breakfast and ate slow, but managed to eat a fair amount. I headed out and knew I was starting the day with a climb. Yay! I was finally at Whitetop, one of the tallest mountains in Virginia. The climb wasn¢t too bad. It was gradual and I listened to more podcasts and some music too. I listened to a podcast about a woman moving across the world and being excited by a childhood toy after leaving a communist government. I arrived in a nice meadow with a wonderful view and then the trail headed back into the woods. It came back out to another meadow and I passed a little water spring, and then arrived at the road. I decided to take a break here and went and got some water from the spring. I moved on and saw a campsite. The philosophy class was there and they were cooking ramps, which are essentially natural onions and garlic put together. Hot Sauce had showed me them before and they smell really good. I wanted some garlicky onions, yum! They offered them to me, but I passed because I was already on my way. I had another climb to make too. The trail had both the highest peaks in Virginia together on the same day, so now I had to climb Mt. Rogers. I was tired, but still had stamina to keep going. There was a shelter at the top and a campsite a little further. I wasn¢t sure what I was doing yet, but figured I¢d see how I felt when I got up there. The trail passed through a road and a parking lot and I was excited because it had a trash can and a toilet!! I had my trash accessible, which normally isn¢t the case for me. It¢s usually buried in my food bag, but for some reason today I had kept it out. It paid off!! The hill that you could see from the parking lot was covered in pretty yellow flowers. I was excited for the scenery I was going to see in the next few days, as I was about to enter the Grayson Highlands! It was a nice climb up Mt. Rogers. It was a bit stormy and I was afraid it would rain, but it didn¢t. There was a small view with some pine trees that was pretty, and then I ran into Danran! He was surprised we hadn¢t seen any ponies yet. I headed on and out into an open bald and there they were!! The ponies! They were a good distance away, but I was so excited to see them! Danran caught up and we took pictures. And then the ponies came up to us!! I had been told about this, but wasn¢t sure if they actually did like humans. The ponies seemed to be totally fine with both of us. They were licking our legs (nice and salty I¢m sure) and following us around. I was a little nervous because I¢m not very familiar with horses at all and they were licking me and I was just a bit nervous haha. Danran was nervous because there was a baby sitting in the grass, but we didn¢t know where the mother was. We hiked on past the ponies. They followed for a bit, but then retreated. We arrived at the shelter and I was so excited by what I had just seen. I was in great spirits. I saw the same two section hikers from the last shelter, and I also saw Snowflake and her dog, D¢Artagnan. Salamander was there too! She had two friends along with her, Peetree and Bananas. They were just section hiking for a bit with her. I laughed at Peetree¢s name because my sister used to call my old boyfriend that. Petri and Petrismo lol it was pretty funny. Gotta love nicknames! The section hikers went upstairs and I claimed a spot up there too. I was debating going on, but this seemed like a nice crowd and fun place to be, and I was unsure of the weather situation. Salamander and her friends were lovely and we sat eating dinner. They gave me some Mexican hot cocoa, which was delicious. And then we had some visitors! The freaking ponies came right up to the shelter! They were eating everything in site, even the water bags on the table. We had to pull the bags out of their mouths like they were dogs. They were licking everyone and we soon had 20 ponies around the shelter. It was honestly kind of awesome. I was scrambling to move my stuff and that wasn¢t so awesome because I had to move all my food inside the shelter and eat in there, but still. I mean how many times do you have dinner on a mountaintop with ponies? They licked my legs a bit, but also bit, so I was not a huge fan of that. They were licking everyone. We all have that lovely salt I guess! Yum! As amazing as it was to host our dinner guests, it was time for everyone to go home. One of the section hikers used a red bandana to gently swat at the ponies and they all slowly left. We named him Matador haha. We were getting ready for bed and a man and his son showed up. They were kind of disrespectful. They were also section hikers. The son threw all their stuff upstairs and spread it all out over my stuff and I was irritated. It felt cramped up there now. The son and his father ate Mountain Houses, which I later discovered in the privy. Really? You can¢t pack out your trash? You¢re here for literally a week! I¢ve seen thru-hikers picking up trash that isn¢t even theirs and carrying it for miles, even with their heavy bags, and you can¢t carry it for a week? The privy was pretty sweet though. None of us had realized there was one, until Peetree yelled out. It was so funny because moments earlier, Snowflake had told everyone to go see the sunset down by the water source, and one man walked over, but when Peetree announced that there was a privy, the entire group of people at the shelter walked down to see the privy. Hiker priorities? Pooporities? Shouldn¢t have told the man and his son about the privy; it¢s not a trash!I was excited that this shelter had a bear box!! Ahh! I missed you, sweet bear box! You beautiful, smart invention, you! I could¢ve hugged it. I met two guys who were sitting by the box at a fire ring. There was a gorgeous view nearby. We chatted for a bit and they were my age, just out for a section hike. The box was fairly new because there had been bear problems at this shelter this year. The Grayson Highlands in general have had bear problems because they¢re so touristy. I¢ve actually heard some crazy bear stories lately. I had already heard about Salamander¢s ursack, but I have some more for y¢all. Apparently a mama bear and her cub tag-teamed and the cub climbed out onto the branch and cut the rope and the mama bear caught the food bag. And people say bears aren¢t smart. Um! They¢re clearly aware of how to get people¢s food now and corrupting their own youth! I heard several stories like that and that¢s why they put the bear box here. Everyone had hung their bags properly and followed the rules and the bears still got the food. I have to admit, the cub and mama bear story is kinda cute. And the cubs are so little and furry and fluffy and squishy, but yeah I know, I wouldn¢t want to deal with those bears if they were hungry or protective. It is interesting though, a lot of these bears don¢t seem to give a crap about the yelling humans trying to get them to leave. ¢What human? Stop screaming, I¢m in the middle of something!¢ Lol that¢s essentially what happens. The massive raccoons have outsmarted us. (PUT BEAR BOXES AT EVERY SHELTER) what? Sorry I didn¢t say anything. I was further annoyed by the man and the son because the man snored. It was like we had a pony upstairs. It was so unbelievably loud. I know I¢ve discussed my feelings about the snoring situation in shelters and I get that I might have to deal with it in shelters, but I was literally minutes from bed when this man came in and I would¢ve gotten a perfect night¢s sleep without his roaring. Ugh. I barely slept. I put in my headphones and debated setting my tent up it was so bad. I put up with it and eventually fell asleep. Other than that, the day was so wonderful. The scenery was beautiful, I climbed two tall mountains, I ate dinner with ponies, and I got to use a bear box. A great day on trail in the books!Little Debbie