Mountains Under Foot

From Hazard’s notes:
Day 49: June 27, 2009
Travel:
From: Dripping Rock parking overlook, VA (Rusty’s Hard Time Hollow)
To: Waynesboro, VA
Beginning: 10:00am
Ending: 3:00pm
Number of miles hiked:
a) Trail – 14.3
b) other
c) AT Mile Marker – 852.5 cumulative
Weather:
Am & Pm: Awesome! The dry streak continues.
People: Iceman and Cattywampus.
Animals: Townfolk…?
Money: $11 for dinner, $810 cumulative.
Notes of the day:
AM: Woke up at Rusty’s earlier than usual probably from the roosters. Had breakfast and Rusty gave us a ride back to where we left off yesterday. Iceman and Cattywampus had left to try and hitch a ride much earlier. We moved down the trail pretty fast and took a video on some rocks overlooking Wintergreen ski resort. Got to Paul Wolfe Shelter around 1pm and Iceman & Catty were there taking a break. I had some tuna and Spoon went without. Got back to work 30 minutes later and punched out 5 miles by 3pm. Not too bad. We were at Rockfish Gap, which is mile marker 0 on the BRP, taking pictures and a van pulls up and they where trail angels shuttling people into town. The easiest hitch we’ve ever had, didn’t even have to stick our thumbs out.

PM: They gave us the tour of Waynesboro and dropped us off at the YMCA suggesting we needed to take advantage of the free showers before we went anywhere. Got showers and then headed to the library next door to get some things uploaded and check emails. Iceman came rolling in 30 minutes later and sat down at a computer. Catty was off meeting up with her parents and he was planning on staying at the church hostel with us. At 5pm the computers kicked us off and we shuffled out of the library. While Spoon and I were walking to the church we saw Iceman hurrying over waving his hands. We thought “Oh no, the hostel is full or something” but he came over and said, “What is the greatest trail magic you’ve ever gotten?” We both kinda looked at each other confused and then he told us Catty’s parents wanted to get us a hotel room. They brought an ice cream maker and wanted to meet some of the hikers. So we rode out to the edge of town to the Marriot Residence Inn and got hooked up with some posh digs. After dropping our stuff and taking advantage of the flat screen TV we got a ride out to a Chinese buffet while Catty and the parents went to Outback Steak House. We stuffed ourselves silly with as much food as we could and then lounged around to digest and wait for our the others to finish and come back for us. Once our ride returned, we resupplied and came back to the hotel. There was more TV, repackaging of food, Catty’s parents had brought her MacBook so there was Internet access. We were in Heaven. But wait, there’s more, after re-showering (because the YMCA just didn’t de-grease our hair) we got called to the other room for homemade ice cream and poundcake. Yum! Good conversations, good times. The rest of the night was me updating blog stuff, uploading more pictures, chatted with Kim (Setting up some Massachusetts trail magic) and my mom, splitting one of our videos to fit on YouTube, and catching up on Cat’s blog. That took a little more time than I anticipated. Going to bed late…