Date: 2010-06-16
From: Crampton Gap Shelter

To: Pine Knob Shelter
Miles today: 13.5
Weather: light rain

~~~ "Water" is the New Guinness ~~~I'm sleeping in the shelter and it's still dark out, early morn and I'm thinking to myself, these guys are really rolling around a lot in their sleeping bags. Turns out, they were both up and stuffing them into the stuff sacks. Time to hit the trail. So I got up too, a little stiff, got my gear together, ate a bag of cereal with powdered milk, which I promptly threw up about a 1/2 hour later, and hiked up the blue blaze trail to start all over again.My schedule was for me to stay at the Rocky Run Shelter on Tuesday night, so as I came up on it, there was Dennis and Steve again. They had stopped to get water. I decided to take a break and re-group my pack (the largest learning curve for the Trail is in the first week). Got water, signed the shelter journal and realized that I was at the old Rocky Run Shelter. There is a much nicer one IF you take the right hand trail where it converges at the AT trail. No matter, the older shelter was fine for me and closer to the water anyway. Left Crampton Gap at 640 and arrived here at 940 ~ 5 miles in four hours. Not bad; in fact, a little too fast.It is harder than I thought to hike alone. You tend to run out of thoughts pretty quick and since I didn't bring any music or e books, it can get a little boring. You do see some of the green that surrounds you but 99.8% of the time, you are looking at your feet because you are walking across rocks and boulders and tree roots and into gullies and occasionally you look up to check to see the AT blaze OR you turn around to see it southbound ~ just to make sure you are still on Trail as if you don't pay attention, the Trail can lead off to some other Trail that is not THE trail and then you have to back track and you lose time and miles and NO, I have not done that yet. So I met up with this wonderful woman who's trail name is Gigi because that's what her grand kids call her and she is a LOT like Grandma Gatewood of AT fame. Older, several hundred miles under her belt, wise, wise woman. I passed her and hiked on ahead to the original George Washington Memorial Monument ( no coke machines, drat). Got a photo of Snoopy there and met up again with Gigi before heading off into the woods. I've found that the Trail leads you back to people that you think you'll never see again. It's happened several times now.Went on ahead to the next pit stop for the night at Pine Knob Shelter and I have to say to the ATC, this shelter totally sucks BUT the people we had there were fantastic. Hooked up with Kristina (no trail name yet, a family for four who were section hiking, including there pre teen daughter, Celebrity, though he signs the logbooks under a different celebrity name, Gigi, Lorod, this great gentleman who showed up late, sounds like Billy Bob Thornton and cooked up a meal for himself that would have fed a family for four, this dude named 151 who's carrying, instead of Leki poles, these HUGE iron poles (to help build up his upper body) and later on, these two kids who both were previous thru hikers who brought up to the shelter (and I mean from quite a ways away) 24 hot dogs and cookies and Capri Sun drinks. It was my very first experience of a Trail Angel and it was quite dee lish, considering I'm not eating much. Lorod, who started in Georgia, was able to pack away several hot dogs and cookies ON TOP of the enormous dinner he ate ~~~ everyone was most impressed.Now, about the shelter ~~~ the front area that hold a picnic table, was right next to a fire pit which had been used and abused so much that the entire area had that oil, sooty junk all over the ground and everyone's camp shoes were blackened. The shelter had a bit of water in it, not very clean BUT between the people and the Trail Magic, it was juts fine. Also, the privy could have used a cleaning out; lucky for me, having not eaten for awhile, I had no need to use it. Water source was good, a pipe running mountain water into a stream.Gigi, Kristina and I were the last to leave. No problem; I am in no hurry. All is well.