Date: 2016-05-07
From: Pickle Branch Shelter

To: Bobblet's Gap Shelter
Miles today: 50.9
Weather: overcast clouds

Pickle Branch Shelter to Bobblet's Gap Shelter 5/7/16 end mileage 712.1   Today we passed the 700 mile mark and I'm not sure why but this seemed like a very significant number of miles to walk to me, so I was pretty pleased with the accomplishment.    Our destination for today was Campbell Shelter. This was only a 17 mile hike and not too difficult for the most part but we crossed a couple of significant landforms along the way. The first one is called Dragon's Tooth and its a giant slab of tilted stone that's about forty feet high and angled at about 75 degrees. Very impressive, and very popular with the tourists and day hikers on this Saturday morning. The northbound hike down from Dragon's Tooth was very steep, with some iron rungs stuck in the rocks in places. Not an easy descent with a 35 lb. pack on your back.    We came to VA 624 and walked the .3 miles to Catawba Grocery where we had been anticipating some good junk food and we were not disappointed! After we ordered a pizza and went outside to wait for it, a man approached us and asked us if we were thru hikers. When we told him we were, he handed us each a Snickers ice cream bar and told us that he had started a thru hike this year but had to stop when he got hurt. His trail name is Sam Squared and he is such a nice guy! Thanks to Sam for his act of kindness. Also got to talk with Strider and Magellan, a son and father 2016 thru hiking team. Hope to see more of them up the trail. And many thanks to Jarrod, current thru hiker, and his girlfriend who came down from New York to spend a couple days with him, for their trail magic at the 624 road crossing.    Headed north again and ran into more trail magic from Medicine Man, another current thru hiker who is off the trail for a few days while his dog's paw heals. Then it was off from the VA 311 parking lot toward the second significant landform of the day, McAfee Knob, about 4 miles distant. From what I understand, this is the most-often photographed spot on the AT. It certainly was popular on this Saturday afternoon because there was a steady stream of people on the trail, most of them headed down as it was getting late in the afternoon. Caboose and I managed to take the wrong trail and ended up doing about a mile of extra hiking to get back to where we should have turned. We got to McAfee Knob and had time for a few pictures before leaving for the last .7 miles to Campbell Shelter. 5/8/16 end mileage 727.5   Short day today, only 15.4 miles to Daleville VA. Deceptively short though because a lot of it was ridge walking and very rocky and hard on the feet. We had good weather though. We got to US 220 in Daleville, turned right, walked about 200 feet and arrived at the Howard Johnson Express motel where we had a reservation and I had a package waiting for me containing my summer sleeping bag and a couple of short sleeve t-shirts. There were a lot of other thru hikers staying there too. We shared our room with Shoe, Seabiscuit and Food Bag. After we got settled in and got our laundry done all five of us met up with Spidey and Mismatch and walked down to the nearby Cracker Barrel restaurant for supper. Getting across US 220 and negotiating the US 220-interstate 81 interchange on foot was an interesting exercise in self-preservation. Even more so on the way back in the dark. After supper we still had time to go to the 24 hour Kroger for our resupply. 5/9/16 end mileage 746.0   Had our continental breakfast at the motel this morning and I'm not sure how they can feed all those hikers, who eat twice as much as the normal motel guest. Don't care though, as long as they don't run out of food! After breakfast Caboose and I and the group we had supper with the night before all had to go back to the shopping center. I had to mail home some items including my winter sleeping bag and a broken camera. I think I may have shed a couple of pounds from my pack. We didn't get back on the trail until 1100 for an 18.5 mile hike to Bobblet's Gap Shelter. Today was my turn to push the speed pretty hard over some relatively easy terrain to finish 18.5 miles in six and a half hours. We crossed the Blue Ridge Parkway for the first time of many today. It was deserted, apparently a section of it closed for some kind of road work. At the shelter we met NOBOs Speilberg, Kelsey and AB. Speilberg is keeping a video record of his thru hike and you can see his work by searching "Craig's Appalachian Trail thru hike" on YouTube. Some good stuff. Another fellow who was in the shelter this night had a habit of drinking beer, eating corn chips, farting and snoring at various intervals throughout the night. So that made things pleasant. Enough said.