Date: 2008-04-07
From: Jenny Knob Shelter VA

To: Wapiti Shelter VA
Miles today: 14.2
Weather: overcast clouds

Day 50 ¢ Monday April 7 ¢ Wapiti Shelter VA ¢ Miles Today: 14.2 Total Miles: 607.4When we woke up at 5:45 this morning, Grasshopper immediately informed Brakeman "No dice" on a 22-mile day. Mentally and physically she did not want another big day, so after making that decision (although we had already stretched our feet) we went back to sleep. The last couple days have been a bit hard on her feet and Grasshopper's left lower leg is a bit tender. We believe its all muscle soreness so we should be fine; just need to go a little bit easier. We find that on the long days we have to concentrate a lot on keeping the pace up, limiting breaks and limiting talking to people, which is just not fun to do all the time. So we decided to do just a 14-miler today. This morning we said goodbye to Lucky and Tim, as we were not sure if we¢d see them again. It was really interesting to watch them get prepared to leave. I think if they wanted a joint trail name, it should be Oscar and Felix. Tim is a 3-time thru-hiker. His pack including everything but food and water weighs 12.5 pounds. He has a beautiful homemade low profile pack. He has his routines of setting up camp and breaking camp down pat. Lucky, attempting his second thru-hike (he didn¢t make it far the first time), has an external frame pack which seems wider than his body and is stuffed to the gills, top and bottom. His pack reaches from his head to his butt. It took him 5 minutes to just put his rain cover on his pack. Very different extremes, just like Oscar and Felix. As Lucky headed up the trail this morning with a mug of coffee in his hand, he hollered to Tim, "You know I'm going to hike slow when I'm having my coffee in the morning - it's just my routine. You're going to have to get used to it." Funny. Never saw someone hike with a mug of coffee before. They're on day 2. It should be real interesting to see how Oscar and Felix do as a team.Today's terrain again was not too bad; on the easier side definitely but not quite as smooth as the trail yesterday as today we had a bit more rock. We also had umpteen million stream crossings. One we crossed on a little limb probably no more than 4" wide. Pretty fun. We weren¢t too concerned if the little limb broke as the water wasn't that deep, nor was it flowing fast, so we just relaxed and enjoyed a fun challenge. We also went over a very long suspension bridge - probably about 40 yards long. At camp this morning, Tim mentioned that we had a swinging bridge coming up and joked with Brakeman that it might be a good time to give Grasshopper a scare.   He thought he had mentioned this out of earshot from Grasshopper, but she caught wind of what he was saying and told him, ¢She ain't afraid of no stinkin swinging bridge.¢ At our lunch break at the trail junction to Dismal Creek Falls, we ran into a previous thru-hiker, Mike, who was out day hiking in flip-flops. We questioned him regarding the forecast and learned that the gray days are to continue until Thursday! Well, now we know to mentally prepare for more gray days. We¢re already on Day 5, so what¢s 3 more days on top of that?   But to our surprise, an hour or so after talking to him and after 4 34 days of gray sky, the sky began to clear and it continued to get more and more sunny as the day progressed! We hit another milestone today - over 600 miles! As we neared camp, there was an open area where we saw a two deer run through the woods in front of us. We are spending the night at Wapiti Shelter and are enjoying the shelter area to ourselves (at least so far). We¢re trying to dry everything so we don't have any mold issues; our rain gear and tent fly are hanging on a line and our backpacks are outside airing. It's 6:00; we're waiting for our dinner to finish cooking. The shelter area is very nice and treed but open because the leaves aren't out yet. We're surrounded by a couple ridges. We have a beautiful sky and we're sitting here with our camp shoes and long pants and just #1 shirts, as the temperature is quite nice. I'm guessing probably in the mid to upper 50s. Let's hope that the blue skies remain. Lucky and Tim arrived later this evening. Lucky came over to us and chatted while the ever-efficient multi thru-hiker Tim set up his tarp tent in about 1 minute. Turns out that they took a detour off the trial today to enjoy a cheeseburger! They also mentioned that we walked right past the Trail Magic in the creek ¢ a six-pack of coke! DRATS. We need to make a habit of always looking in creeks for drinks from now on!! We have another 14-mile day tomorrow followed the next day with a trip into Pearisburg for resupply. We¢ve decided to not spend the night in Pearisburg after all. We have determined that we need to start winging our miles each day a bit more because planning 4-5 days ahead just doesn't seem to work. We need to pay a little more attention to how our bodies feel, how we are holding up mentally and how easy or tough the terrain is.Goodnight from a gorgeous sunny evening at Wapiti Shelter, finally!