Date: 2007-05-27
From: Front Royal (Quality Inn) 

To: DickÃÂÃÂ¢ÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂs Dome Shelter 
Miles today: 15.1
Weather: broken clouds

Woke up to Blazer walking through the door with some Dunkin Donut coffee. Though he would like to point out it¢s not a real Dunkin, it¢s in a gas station. We have a 10:30am shuttle which leaves us plenty of time for breakfast. Today we get a table at L¢ dees and for under 5 bucks I get a coffee, 2 eggs, 2 pancakes, 2 bacon, and 2 sausage. The shuttle arrives just as the weather guy says sunny and 90 degrees. I go to hop in the back of the truck and it¢s raining. I don¢t know whether to hate the weather guy or be happy it¢s not 90 degrees. We start our hike up away from US 522. The trail follows the zoo research place. Man they have a lot of land. 3 miles in, we run into a guy, his daughter, and what looks like his mom. They look like they just hopped out of a car. They seem lost as they would like to know where we came from. I tell them Front Royal is 3 miles back and the next shelter is 2 miles ahead. She tells me the shelter is just feet away. Alrighty then¢¦ Good Luck! Blazer thinks save them, I think I should leave them. They follow us down to a forest road, probably the one they came from. They were geo-caching and claimed to have bush-whacked down from Hightop, I think they probably turned onto the AT from the road. The whole situation left me puzzled. By the time I reach the shelter for lunch, I have forgotten the whole thing. After lunch, the trail leaves the woods and climbs up this grassy hill. When I say grassy, I mean it was as tall as us. One would also think they could mow a path bigger than 5 inches wide. Throw in enough poison ivy to kill a horse. I have no scientific data to back that up, but walk a horse through there, it¢s dead in 3 days. I wash my legs off in a stream. There was to be trail magic, but everything was gone. We start up the hill and the familiar sound of thunder joins us. When we feel some sprinkles, on go the pack covers. Blazer says we don¢t have to worry till the wind shows up. As if that was its cue, the wind gusts start. So much so, that we were more worried about branches falling on our heads, than the lightning. Eventually we would have it all, thunder/lightning, wind, and pouring rain. Nothing to do but walk and get wet. We wait out the last half of the storm at Manassas Gap shelter. Our plan is to set up our tents when the rain stops. Normally the story would end here. We are anything but normal. More people show up. So we go to find a tent spot. I find what I think is the best around. Blazer says we should move on. Well, this doesn¢t happen to often. So off we go and go and go. In fact we make it another 5 miles to Dick¢s Dome shelter just as its getting dark. There was nothing, and I mean nowhere to camp between shelters. When we get down the side trail, there are about 20-30 people camping around a shelter that holds 4. We set up our tents on a blue blazed trail that appears to go nowhere. The ridge runner would have dropped dead if he came down here. We cooked in the middle of the shelter trail in the dark. Blazer is beating himself up about leaving, but I followed him and I¢ve been through here twice.