Date: 2017-09-17
From: Campsite near mile marker 1669

To: Thomas Knob Shelter
Miles today: 23.2
Weather: few clouds

I got up this morning at about 5:30 a.m., when I heard a loud owl hooting near our camp site. Buy red light I started to pack up and break camp. About 10 minutes later Stewart was up and shortly after that so was Wesley. I switched to white light. When I was about 85% packed up (I still had my puffy jacket on, because it was cold), I got down our bear bags and started making breakfast. I was on the trail shortly after 7 a.m.About 8 a.m. I crossed the footbridge over what the guide book calls a "powerful waterfall" through the rhododendron jungle. Picture.Stewart caught up with me as I was finishing up my journal entry for yesterday. We hiked together for a while and were talking not realizing we had taken a wrong turn and hiked .4 miles off the trail. We turned around and headed back to the trail and continued. During this time Wesley had gotten ahead of us. We caught up to him when stopped for lunch at the Old Orchard shelter about noon.About 1 p.m. I entered a corral around which there were free roaming Longhorn cattle and people riding horses. Pictures. As I climbed the hill on the far side of the corral, I could see in several directions that much of the foliage had begun to change color in the surrounding hillsides. Pictures.About 2:30 p.m. I entered the Grayson Highlands State Park and I caught up to Wesley at the White shelter. We hiked for a little while and then got some water at a creek. We knew there should be water at the Thomas Knob shelter, but we wanted to be sure. It seems we hiked quite a while before we emerged from this woods into a region of smaller bushes and trees covering the surrounding hillsides. I climbed a large rocky outcropping and took some pictures in a panorama. After hiking I saw some ponies and walked over near them for photos.Continuing south, we began to climb again after leaving the open area of the highlands and crossing into more rocky terrain. We went through an area known as fat man squeeze, which reminded me of the lemon squeezy in southern New York State. However, this one was not as narrow and I actually didn't even need to take my pack off to go through it. At about 4:30 we arrived at the Thomas Knob shelter. There was a good water source just to the west where maintainers had constructed a corral to keep horses from dropping manure on the area that would leach into the water supply. At the downhill end of this area was a 2 inch PVC pipe running into a spring which was flowing freely. I filled my remaining water bottles there.As the evening progressed for dinner time, more hikers joined us.  There were two different sets of two women, one group of which stopped only to leave their packs so that they could hike up and back from the summit of Mount Rogers about .7 miles away. Then they continued their hike. The second group stayed but did not have trail names. One was from the Shenandoah Valley, and the other was from Denver and they had met at college in Pennsylvania. They were just doing a day circuit and had come from their car about 7 miles away. There was also a guy on a day a hike whose name I didn't get either. And there was a long distance hiker whose trail name was Sale. She was a 25 year old woman who had started hiking in Alabama and connected some trail there with the Benton McKay trail in Georgia to eventually join the Appalachian Trail. It was not clear to me exactly what her destination was. I heard her discussing it with others as I was falling asleep, but I did not stay awake long enough to hear all the story. There was also a father/son team. The man appeared to be in his late 30's, and the boy appeared to be about 12 years old.The shelter was rather large, and it had an upper deck as well as a main floor. Each floor could hold 8 people. The Father/son team decided to tent rather than stay in the shelter. The rest of us stayed inside, men on the first deck, and the women took the upper deck.It was a starry night, clear and cold. I was surprised how much dew accumulated on things left outside after it got dark. Wesley's sleeping bag had been hanging on a branch in the sun, but when he brought it in after dark, it was soaked. I could also hear water dripping off the roof all night despite the fact that the sky remained clear and there was no rain.22.4 mi trail.8 mi backtracking23.2 mi total