Date: 2012-05-25
From: State Route 624, VA

To: Lamberts Meadow Shelter, VA
Miles today: 17.1
Weather: few clouds

Cross three streams in the 2 miles between S.R. 624 and S.R. 785 also known as the Blacksburg Road. Find good water in the middle stream where I fill my water bottles. Get two ticks, which I remove and crush, in the high grass (like four feet deep, completely covering the trail, this must be some kind of hay pasture) just before the Blacksburg Road. See a small box turtle in a cow pasture just after the Blacksburg Road. Pass cows in the fields. While making ascent of Sawtooth Ridge, pause to call my friend Larry from trail to wish him a happy 50th B.D. We talk for 40 minutes. Remainder of ascent, traverse and descent of Sawtooth Ridge are nice. Up from McAfee Knob parking area get water at spring at Catawba Mountain Shelter. Have nice ascent to McAfee Knob. This section of trail gets a lot of use from locals. Cook rice dinner at top of McAfee Knob. Meet a few locals and see Yoko and Chunder at overlook. Get pics at overlook. Nice descent and traverse around spectacular Tinker Cliffs. Before today the weather has generally been on the cool side with pretty regular rain. Today, the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend, it's as if Mother Nature has flipped a switch, as a warm morning turns into a hot and humid afternoon. Coincident with this hot day, the Cicada's have emerged in, literally, thousands and millions. The forest resounds with the most incredible roar of their "buzzing". Nice descent to Lamberts Meadow Shelter where I decide to spend the night. Yoko and Chunder are at the shelter but soon decide to move on. In the late afternoon, the still air, combined with the heat and humidity make for a sticky feeling. It has been a long hot tiring day. Find a tick crawling on the shelter floor, which I crush. As per my usual evening routine, I have my sponge bath, wash my trail clothes and settle in for the night. By the time I'm in the bag it is dark and I am the only one in the shelter. There are a couple of other parties camped in the vicinity, but not immediately at the shelter. About 9:30 pm a single woman arrives at the shelter and starts breaking up some large branches to build a fire, which generates a considerable amount of loud noise. After this goes on for some time, I finally speak up and ask the young woman "Do you know what time it is?". She pauses from her wood breaking and then says "No". My reply, which is the last words I will speak to her are "I didn't think so". She complains that she can build a fire if she wants to, and goes on with her wood breaking. After some time, not having much luck with her fire, she wanders over to some of the others camped nearby and makes her dinner with them. I never find out, but guess that this is somebody who is out for the holiday weekend, and not somebody who is really "on the trail". Generally I'm less enthusiastic about the weekends, because there's always a chance that you'll encounter these kinds of casual campers who are just out for a few nights of partying in the woods, and who just don't, or really can't, "get it". I understand that they are in a different place from me, and I don't really begrudge them that. But it is a bit irksome. Eventually the young woman comes back and settles into her sleeping bag. We are the only two in the shelter tonight, I at one end, she at the other.