Date: 2005-04-23
From: Virginia Beach, VA (Bland)

To: stealth camp 0.5 miles south of Helvey's Mill
Miles today: 1.8

start: Virginia Beach, VA (Bland)finish: stealth camp 0.5 miles south of Helvey's Mill Shelter miles: 1.8day: 47Mrs. Moosie is packing lunches for us for today's road trip back across Virginia. We don't want to overeat today, though, as we're targeting the famous Homeplace restaurant for dinner. We have to hit it from the car today, as it may be closed when we walk through next week.I need to mention how nice this stay has been, and those who made it possible. If it weren't for our friends Susie and Chris, we'd have had no place to stay. What a great beach town condo. We really appreciate you letting us hiker trash use it. And Mrs. Moosie for coming all this way down from Connecticut on her vacation time just to see us, cook for us, bring us town clothes, etc. I know she's been missing us, but it was still a lot of work for her. And last but never least, Stumpthwacker for carting us all over Virginia without complaint. He runs a great shuttle service. Without his help Mrs. Moosie would have had two days of driving and she wouldn't have been able to relax and enjoy our time together as much. He's welcome at the Moosie's Hostel any time.We nailed down some mail drop details today, and arranged for Mrs. Moosie to send our bug netting soon for our tarps. We also got the lowdown from Stumpy on all the good places to eat and stay for the next 900 miles north, until we walk through Connecticut. We have a plan for Trail Days scheduling, but need to talk with Underpants about it. We plan to kick the miles up a notch at least until Trail Days, banking some miles against some time off later.Well, we're almost to the Homeplace now, and getting hungry. I just realized I forgot to mention something in my journal from a couple of days ago. I got an email from Liteshoe saying that she was doing trail maintenance south of Partnership Shelter the day we were hiking near Atkins. She had planned to see us and give us all kinds of good stuff. The only thing better than trail magic is trail magic with my name on it. Unfortunately we were too far north and missed her. So she must have had to give our goodies to other hikers, most of whom we must have seen the two days we hiked south recently. Not one of them mentioned being handed my trail magic and eating it. Hmmm, some bunch of friends. Liteshoe, thanks so very much for the effort. As I said before to you, and this goes for everyone, my trail magic availability schedule is available upon request. See you at Trail Days![later, in the tarp...]It's bloody snowing! Not sticking so far, as the ground's all wet, but it may later tonight if the temperature drops further. It's cold! We had a great feed at The Homeplace - I finally got really full. I need to hike before I can eat more. We ran into Running Moon, Jukebox, Corduroy, Billy, Heidi, Featheer, and Maruchen(?). We then drove down to Bland and noticed three hikers we haven't seen before - we've been fooling around and folks are catching up to us. When we got to the trailhead, at around 7:50 pm, the temp was down to 39 degrees. And windy and raining and snowing a bit. If Stumpknocker says he had to pry my hands loose so he could push me out of the truck, and that I was whining "no, I don't want to go out there!", don't believe a word he says.Now I'm warm in my sleeping bag, but the fingers are too cold to continue, so good night.