Date: 2005-04-10
From: Elk Garden

To: Old Orchard Shelter
Miles today: 15.2
Weather: few clouds

I'm looking at my food right now wondering what the hell I was thinking during my drunken grocery shopping 2 days ago in Damascus. I've more or less ended up with a bunch of Little Debbie snacks and easy Mac for breakfast, lunch a & dinner for the next 3 days. It was worth it though - we were all taking turns sneaking up behind each other and dropping any number of heavy grocery products into our handheld baskets Maruchan got Heidi with a 10 pound jar of some sort of pickled sausages and Gunter nailed me wih a 6 pound can of green beans. He also signed up for a Food City savings card under the "name" of Albert Feather - for some reason I also bought a HUGE box of Ziploc freezer bags that I'm carrying with me unused - I couldn't just throw away the extras. As much fun as it was, there will be NO MORE drunken grocery shopping. At least I nabbed a king size bag of Skittles that I'm now enjoying.Today was AMAZING - so much so that my present grocery woes aren't even getting to me. The weather couldn't have been more perfect - a little too sunny if it's possible to complain about that because I've got a pretty mean burn going on wherever skin was exposed. We've already conquered the highest point in VA and I have to say I'm in love with the people that graded the trail in this state. The shelter after it was really cool (Thomas Knob) and thank God we're now back in the land of privies!! (TN lacks these prized sructures). We took a long lunch on some rock outcroppings behind the shelter and met a section hiker that recognized my name from trailjournals, which was cool and weird at the same time - first time that's happened so far. Gunther and Pigpen immediately got excited that they must be "famous" too since they're part of my entourage. The Grayson Highlands were awesome - we did get lost for a bit on a horse trail, but otherwise the hike was great and best of all I got to feed some wild ponies! Bob (from Kincora) recommended I bring little salt packets with me because apparently the ponies are salt deficient & it worked like a charm! Only problem is the ponies are worse beggars than dogs and started coming out of the woodwork when we sat down for a snackbreak. Once the horses outnumbered hikers, we got nervous and got outta there. We did additional sunbathing at Wise Shelter (why I'm FRIED right now) and consequently ran out of sunlight to make it to our 500 mile mark tonight - we had to stop a mile & a half short at Old Orchard. The last few miles to the shelter I listened to some tunes, which was a fun switch-up to my normal hiking routine. Unfortunately I deafly followed Gunther and Pigpen the last several miles as they repeatedly looked back at me & giggled - they have since revealed to me that they were farting the whole way & laughing at the fact that I was "eating them" and didn't know it - Boys are so gross. As if the day could get any better we were watching the sun set over the mountains when a large owl flew into a tree over our camp. It let us walk right up to it - easily the most beautiful and cool bird I've ever seen - and then it flew away as Jack (Jill's dog) came near - its wingspan was enormous. It's a beautiful clear night and we have a huge tent colony set up outside the shelter in a grassy field. Now that journal time is done I'm gonna lay in my tent and watch for shooting starts - I'm one lucky girl!