I've had a beautiful trip here! Let me start off.
Operation Buena Vista Boogaloo was a complete success-- I arrived at Punchbowl shelter the day of my last post and rolled in rather late (8:45 to be exact). I climbed over Bluff mountain and saw the Ottie Cline Powell monument-- it's a sad little spot where a girl ran away from her schoolhouse in November of 1898 and died on top of the mountain (9 miles away from her school). her body wasn't found until April of the next year and the monument is directly on the spot where they found her. I, along with many other hikers, put a small stone on the monument to show our commemoration and sadness for her passing-- she was only 4 years, 11 months old when she died.
The way down from Bluff mountain was sad and spooky-- I wandered along through the woods and spooked (and was spooked) by several deer that would launch out of the brush where I couldn't see them. One even ran out onto the trail behind me after I had passed. The deer have been interesting-- coming off of Wind Rock a week ago I found one that would run away from me but got curious and came up to within 100 yards. It was a beautiful little game, I'd move and it would pace off and come back again-- eventually it tired of the game and ran off.
At Punchbowl shelter, i found someone asleep already within the shelter (there was also a Mormon group camping outside of the shelter, about 12 strong and sleeping under two large tarps that night but they had a fire roaring and they were laughing and talking quiet loud for the hour I rolled in). I got everything set up and accidentally woke the older gentleman-- I found out his name was the comeback kid-- he was section hiking and the reason I never heard of him was that he never wrote in the registers because he "didn't have anything wise to write."
As I was about to go to sleep, Danny rolled in-- we talked briefly, I ate a poptart and fell to sleep rather quickly. In the morning, Danny woke me up with his moving about and I set off on the trail soon after him. I got to a spring and met a kid in a dark blue shirt-- his name was Sleeping Bear-- he was three days ahead of me when I started back in Atkins and I had just caught up with him. he wasn't too talkative but he is an OK kid. I pushed miles hard and rolled into the Brown Mountain Creek Shelter where I finally met Hoosh. I had heard much of him and his entries in the registers were always hilarious (poem about Flies, later one at the Priest shelter where he confessed his sin to be that he'd be drinking a LOT at the Devil's backbone brewery). It was great to finally meet him-- he's a nice guy, probably in his early 30's, wears a bandana and carries one heck of a light pack. Danny was there, as was Sleeping Bear and we all sat around talking for a while. I had rolled in at noon so I had PLENTY of time to get to my mail drop-- after an hour of talking, I progressed on to US 60-- saw some trail magic for soft drinks and had a Pepsi and headed up to the road to start hitching.
I didn't have to wait long-- a guy was sitting with two people that looked strangely familiar and he was discussing with them while he sat near his truck. After approaching them all, I realized I recognized two of the folks-- they were Unicoi Zoom and her friend-- they had started the trail on march 15th and were planning to get up to Harper's for a flip-flop. Unicoi is a sweetheart and her friend is quite a character-- he's a gentleman who takes a nice, slow and easy pace and instead of wearing a hiking kilt, he bought a woman's polyester skirt from Goodwill and uses that to hike in. It kind of reminds me of the skirt to my Kindergarden teacher's attire-- a flowery number, not quite what you'd expect on a guy.
The older gentleman drove me into town, dropped me off at the cafe where his wife worked and he let me keep my stuff in his car. I got my mail drop which had my hat, a few things from Jess and a big plastic bag full of Sweetart candies from Valentine's Day (yum!) I tried the grocery down the street and they had nothing so I opted instead for Food Lion. The older gentleman I met (both a great storyteller and friend by now) offered to drive me to Food Lion as he had to get his oil changed anyways. He dropped me off, I got a decent... actually crappy... food resupply and I walked back and got a sub at Subway. The older gentleman picked me up, we bullshitted the entire way back to the trail and talked over politics, the trail, rattlesnakes and all kinds of topics-- he was a fantastic soul. We sat around talking again with Unicoi's friend before he headed off to go up the trail. he was easily my favorite soul I've met so far.
The hill up from B.V. was not easy in the least bit-- it was a 1500 foot climb and it took much of the afternoon. As I was moving along past some bridges, I saw a whole gaggle of baby wild turkeys with their mom or dad and they ran towards the stream-- I laughed quite hard, they run so funny. I progressed up the hill and met Unicoi's friend's uncle and the guy himself (I'll just call him Mr. skirt-guy from here on out... Unicoi's friend is too long). Mr. skirt-guy and I walked along slowly up the hill and I told him that his pace was awesome-- we got to talking about chafing and how it kept me away from getting a kilt and he said "just use a shitload of body glide" and i said that would be a terrific idea.
I passed them up on the top and made my way along past Cow Camp Gap shelter-- it was an eerie place for me-- the last 15 miles i had been seeing FBI signs about a kid who was going southbound last year and got murdered near the spot. I felt like I was being watched the whole time. I made it along to Cold Mountain and was there at 9:00-- it wasn't even dark yet but the mountain itself had a beautiful sunset. It was a bare field at the top, much like a bald and the scenery was fantastic. I wanted to camp near it for sunrise so I put up my tent after the "do not tent" area. I had trouble with my tent pegs because the ground was too firm from the lack of rain. When I did get it set up, I didn't go through all of the necessarry pegs for rain. well, it rained of course. I was in my tent in the middle of the night and because sil-nylon (my tent's material) sags when it rains, I turned on my headlamp to see the sides flowing in like the curtains of a bed. I sighed, kept pushing rain off and waited for it to abate for me to put up the ridgeline with my trekking pole. I didn't get much sleep but I finally finished my book, A Storm Of Swords.
The next morning, I tried to dry off my tent but had little luck-- everything was wet and the wind and sun just weren't strong enough on Cold mountain. I did get a beautiful sunrise though. I pushed on to Seely-Woodworth shelter and saw a pack sitting in the shelter I hadn't seen before. I soon met Jurassic 2 who had been getting water-- a guy from Germany, I presume, who chews gum a great deal but is very friendly. We met again a little later near a detour to Crabtree Falls and he went off towards the falls while I kept hiking.
I went by the view for Spy Rock but didn't go to see it. It's not that I didn't want to walk the .1 miles to it, it was simply that there were a shit-ton of kids yelling and screaming on top of the rock and I didn't want to be near them. I come to the woods for solitude and relaxation, not that. That afternoon it rained on and off-- we'd get spells of rain for 3 minutes at a time and I stopped putting on my rain jacket, I just let the rain bounce off of my hat and abate on it's own time. I made it to the climb for The Priest, which was easy enough. The Priest is a tall mountain, about 4100 feet high with a beautiful spring. I saw Hoosh and Sleeping Bear here who both left after a brief while. I tried making instant mashed potatoes, they were TERRIBLE and I had to spit them out after a few bites. I had to sigh, I wouldn't have enough food unless I pushed some big miles. It started to rain soon and it got cold-- spring time type of cold so I wound up putting on my rain jacket on the downhill from The Priest. It was rocky, slippery and cold all of the way down and it took hours to reach the VA 56 and Tye River suspension bridge. On the bright side, I caught a wonderful view of a rainbow when coming down the mountain.
I camped at VA 56, so tired and so worn out and it was about 9:00. I set up in the dark with bugs all around my legs and noises in the Tye River keeping me up. I grabbed a book I had seen at The Priest Shelter called The Tao Of Pooh and started to read-- it was beautiful writing and I soon drifted off to sleep.
I got a late start yesterday and could have beat myself up over it but then again, i have to remember what time I had gotten to bed. I didn't get out of camp until 8:40 or 9:00 and I had a terrible uphill to start the day. I started at 970 ft. and had to progress up to Three Ridges Peak at 3870 ft. On the way up, I passed a shelter and met an ATC worker who was cleaning up. We talked for at least 20 minutes about this and that and wound up discussing rattlesnakes. I mentioned I hadn't seen one on the trail yet, he said "wait for Pennsylvania, you'll see one yet."
I pushed on and met Hoosh, going southbound at the top of the mountain. He had gotten to VA 56, hitchhiked to a brewery (Devil's backbone) and was slackpacking from Reeds Gap to Va 56 (not doing the big uphill, lucky bastard). He was running when he went by and I warned him of the terrible rocks and ticks uphead. He said there was a bees nest and several people got stung by the first shelter-- if it was there, I never saw it.
The second shelter was pretty disgusting-- there were notes about snakes, there was a big hornets nest in the ceiling and I had to leave quickly after getting water. I made it to Reeds Gap where I saw Hoosh again (where his ride brought him back) and he gave me a beer and we sat and talked for a while. Rain swooped over us heavily for 3 minutes and then stopped-- as I walked along later, it picked up again now and then but would abate just as quickly.
I was going along to my campsite for the day, I mere 17 miles on from where I started and I was about to go up the Blue Ridge Parkway to get water when I suddenly heard it-- a rattle. I jumped 2 feet in the air and retraced my steps and looked a foot away from where I was and saw it-- a big, 4-foot long, at least 6-inch thick rattlensnake coiled in a ball and ready to strike my poor ass. I stood shivering for a few minutes, realized i had phone signal and called my sister and brother for a bit to see if the snake would move. It kept rattling and looking at me ominously, even from 15-30 feet away. I eventually had to wait and muster the courage to go down and around it on the trail, I was scared out of my wits.
I camped at mile 844 and got up super early to get a good start today. The terrain was easy and perfect, I rolled over Humpback Mountain and several others for both the reason I wanted to get into town and because I was very, very low on food. I pressed a 15-mile day before 1:00 to get to waynesboro on an 80-calorie pack of tuna and a thing of ramen. I stopped at the last shelter, Paul c. wolfe shelter, and fed small scraps of my ramen to little minnows swimming in a pond. They were going crazy for the ramen and it looked like a game of soccer as the pieces would sweep from one side of the pond to the other. I laughed and was joyous the whole time, relaxed and resting. Eventually I pressed on, my stomach hating me, all the way to Waynesboro. Caught a ride in by hitchhiking (didnt' have battery for a shuttle) from a woman named Cindy, she was a sweetheart. I had Ming Garden (so so so good, had 6 plates) and then went on to meet indian brave who is aqua blazing the Shanendoah's on some wal-mart rafts. Made it to the library and VIOLA!
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