Mountains Under Foot

From Hazard’s notes:
Day 50: June 28, 2009
Travel:
From: BRP Mile ‘zero’, Waynesboro, VA
To: Loft Mountain Campground, VA
Beginning: 10:45am
Ending: 8:45pm
Number of miles hiked:
a) Trail – 27.3
b) other
c) AT Mile Marker – 879.8 cumulative
Weather:
AM: Sunny and hot. Beautiful!
PM: Some dark clouds that brought a few drops but then blew away to make room for more sun. The dry streak continues.
People: Said goodbye to Iceman and Cattywampus, met 10×10 on the overpass to Shenandoah National Park. Magnum Orphan at lunch. The wonderful family that gave us dinner at Loft Mountain Campground.
Animals: Three bear encounters! The first and last were on or near the trail and ran as soon as they saw us. The second was clawing up a tree down from the trail and completely ignored us as we watched him. And we saw a timber rattlesnake. We finally see a rattler almost 900 miles into the trip and it ignores us (doesn’t rattle or feel threatened) and just slithers away…
Money: $0, $810 cumulative.
Notes of the day:
AM: Woke up around 7am because at this stage in the journey I don’t think I can sleep past 7am. Since I didn’t go to sleep last night until 1am, I didn’t feel so great. I grabbed my iPod and worked on catching up my notes. Spoon awoke shortly after with food on his mind so we got dressed and went down to the lobby. There was a delicious spread of food out for the hotel guests including eggs, sausage, hash browns, fruit, cereal, bagels, muffins, a machine to make your own waffles, juice, etc. I had some of just about everything including a waffle with strawberry topping, raisins, pecans, cinnamon-sugar, powdered sugar, and maple syrup. Yea, that happened. Afterwards, we went back upstairs to pack up and I finished my journals and sent them along to my mom. I was in such a hurry to get everything together so we could leave that I forgot to write a few emails, namely one to Cat. Cattywampus was generous enough to give us a ride back to the I-64 overpass with her parents car. We walked from the BRP side over and then it turns into Skyline Drive and Shenandoah National Park (SNP from now on). We had heard how easy the trail was supposed to be here but right at the southern entrance it was tough and rocky. We self registered at the little station set up beside the trail and headed deeper into the park.

PM : After awhile the trail turned into the well graded, gentle sloping ups and downs we had heard people rave about. “Its a hiker’s dream”, people would say. This makes the trail fairly uneventful until bears started jumping out of nowhere and running away from us. Tons of deer too. We walked by one deer and I heard it start to follow me so I spun around and he was looking at me and was indeed closer. An awkward stare later and he bounded off into the woods. We stopped for lunch at a turnout to an overlook and chatted with Magnum Orphan. Then a weird phenomenon happened; when it started to drizzle a little during our conversation and without mentioning anything or skipping a beat we all pulled out our pack covers, put them on, and continued to talk. Have we really been out here that long, where it’s now just force of habit? We arrived at Loft Mountain Campgrounds pretty late as planned to try and dodge the park rangers. It costs $19 for a patch of ground to sleep on (it costs people $15 just to enter the park; except hikers) and we didn’t want to pay. There was a restroom facility that I took advantage of first and I left Spoon to his own devices. When I got out he had found his way into someone’s camp and was chatting them up. It was a very friendly family that had lots of questions for us thru-hikers and we were more than happy to chat. After some time we got up and walked back to our packs to go find a place out of sight to cook dinner as it was late and we were hungry. Then we heard a voice call us back asking, “Hey, Spoon and Hazard, you guys want a hot dog?” Our answer to that question is always: Yes! We walked back over to sit down and they all just kept bringing us food. The little girl, Alexia, brought us a plate with a slab of chocolate cake and a fork, the retired father brought a bunch of hot dogs and buns and started heating the dogs over the fire for us. Before we knew it there were tortilla chips, kettle chips, potatoes that had been cooked with onions, Dr. Pepper, ice tea with mint, ketchup, and mustard. A feast for us starving hikers and we couldn’t be happier. To make things even better they let us set up our rain fly in their campsite to sleep under, hopefully dodging the park fuzz. I hope they find the website and leave a comment for us so we can thank them again for their kindness. Only downside is we didn’t get to sleep until around 11pm. Too late for weary hikers.