Date: 2004-05-15
From: USFS103, Big Horse Gap 

To: Va. 606
Miles today: 11.7

At 7 a.m. we got up, told the other hikers at the hotel, Hoss and Batch, we would give them a shuttle, and we got out of there at about 7:40. Terry took Judy to the post office and then took the other two hikers to the trailhead, while I waited back in town for him.  Hoss said he was from Iowa. He said there's a few hills in Iowa you can train on. But you really have to get on the trail, to get into shape. Today is Saturday May 15th. Terry actually dropped Judy off at the grocery store instead of the post office. Terry drove Hoss and Batch to Highway 52 and the Appalachian Trail. Then we drove up on Va606 and drop the car off. Then take the other car up to Forest Service Road 201 and 671 to Big Horse Gap. Kind of a rough area to get in to. We started hiking, we have 11.7 miles to do today. Get on the the trail at 10:15 am. It's a very nice Trail, you go up a little bit. We took a 10-minute break on a rock on the trail, not knowing that right up the trail was a fantastic outcropping and viewpoint, Overlooking the mountains and the valley. So we took another break at the Fantastic viewpoint. We talked to possibly five different hikers at the viewpoint. Then we went On from there and enjoyed good easy hiking, but it still took until 1:15 p.m. to get to Wapiti shelter. Talk to an unnamed hiker there who's hiking for a month or so before starting a new job. He claimed he had hiked 700 miles in the Smokies, and Cindy wonders how many we have hiked in the Smokies. We stay there for a while at the shelter we had lunch at the shelter and just when we were leaving two guys showed up and said we know you. We had seen them on Highway 606 dropping off a car, before driving back to Pearisburg, and we were hiking the other direction. We left the shelter at 1:45, and we immediately ran into Papa Quick from the old geezers. they had lost the Professor, who got off the trail and said, he'd be back on in a few years. I don't know what that all meant. He said their group may be staying at this shelter, but it's so early in the day, that's not likely. So they may be moving on to another spot for the night. So then we continued on toward our car. We passed the guy who gave us his thoughts on the difference between thru-hikers and section hikers. He said thru-hikers are just trying to enjoy the day. We thought that was totally wrong. Then we met up with the two hikers we knew, Little Tree and Walking Stomach. Everybody we meet wants to know how far it is to the shelter. So we asked, how far is it to the falls. But we have to rest right now, because my feet hurt. It's 3:24 p.m. and we think we may have 3 or 4 more miles to go. After we left Dismal Creek Falls, We started to wonder when we would see Batch again. But we might have missed him at the Falls, since we were looking at it for about 30 minutes. Shortly after I had been saying, how lucky we've been with weather lately, the Thunder started to rumble. Then it started to drizzle, but we were lucky, it's only another mile to the car. But we managed to get to the car without getting out our rain gear. And it was 5:42 p.m. when we got to the car The trail register didn't have Batchs name on it, so possibly he didn't start this way yet. It was close to the start of the Preakness horse race, so we went to the Trent grocery store to see if they had a television. But instead we found Batch in the store. He was eating some ice cream with a gal hiker named Persia or Pre-Show. He didn't seem at all concerned about where he might end up tonight on the trail. Looking out the store window you could see the really dark clouds. We bought some ice cream and then took off to go get our other car. We drove on into Pearisburg. They were full at the Rendezvous Hotel, so we ended up at the Holiday Lodge. We picked up some Subways for supper. We must have hiked 13 miles today all together.