Wet

Greetings from Lexington, VA. I am visiting a college friend of my dad's and getting a well needed shower and laundry. It has been 6 days since my last shower (Troutville) and 8 (Catawba) since I last did laundry. However I have been wet plenty of times since then. Sometimes by choice, jumping into a river, and sometimes not by choice when I got rained on.
After I left the Comfort Inn in Troutville my next goal was to meet a friend of mine in Lynchburg on Saturday for lunch. Shadow Cast, Rocko and Vagabond had to get to the Post Office on the same road before it closed at 10:30am that Saturday. So after one easy day from town we pushed a 21 mile day to a gorgeous shelter. This was a tri-level shelter with enclosed picnic table. Very nice. It was also very dry up in the loft as the huge thunderstorm hit that night. Thunderstorms are always more enjoyable when you are somewhere dry. The next day I was tired, so I stopped and camped after 17 miles while everyone else continued on another 5 miles to the next shelter. At the shelter they found out about some trail magic at the trail head and continued on. They then spent a noisy night camped under the train tracks next to the road. I stayed in my tent, listened to a thundersorm and slept for 11 hours. I woke and continued on. At the shelter I found out that the trail magic was also coooking breakfast in the morning, and set my speed record for 2.2 miles. I had met the person cooking food about three weeks earlier when he was cooking further south. So while he cooked eggs and bacon I ate Krispy Kreme donuts and set out my tent to dry. So in balance I had a grewat night sleep and breakfast, they had a horribloe night, but had hamburgers before going to bed.
After breakfast I hitched towards Lynchburg to the nearest gas station where I could get cell phone service. After a wonderful AYCE Indian buffet with my friend Meghann and her sister I was back on the trail. I thought that I would meet up with everyone again at the first shelt 2 miles from the road, but they had finished their errands earlier and had moved on. This shelter had abrand new wheelchair accesible privy. This was the third wheelchair accesible privy I have come across. Don't get me wrond the ADA act is great, but can we exercise a little common sense? I spent a quiet night with two south bound section hikers burning the wood from the old privy. It did not smell but burned well and quickly.
The next morning I woke up and hiked into a cloud. The wind was blowing something awful and it got cold. I met up with Shadow at the next shelter, but PeakAxe, Vagabond and Rocko had all moved on. I was ready to call it a day and not hike on because of the weather. Shadow insisted we move on so we would only have a 1.7 mile hike out the next day, so on we went. We walked down out from the cloud and then it started raining. When we were 5 miles out from the next shleter the lightning anf thunder started, and the rain worsened. We picked up the pace and I set my 5 miles speed record. However that did not stop the rain from completely soaking everything we were wearing and going through our pack covers. We arrived at the next shelter just as the rain stopped and the sun came out. We switched into our warm and dry clothes and went into our sleeping bags. After drying out and warming up we hung our clothes out to dry. Unfortunely it rained again that night so we just hiked out in our long underwear knowing we would do laundry today. It been fairly old the last couple of days, so while we were waiting for out ride we were huddled on a picnic table sitting on a thermarest under sleeping bag. It is always fun going into a restuarant just in your long underwear, so I put my running shorts on over them. I am not sure that it was an improvement.
The current plan is to go to Trail Days in Damascus and then do Hardcore. Tomorrow we will be meeting back up with Peacock and Daddy-O and then hitting a free hiker lunch on Wednesday before getting picked up by Bigfoot (he section hiked GA with Shadow and myself), then head down on Friday. This will mean about a week off the trail, but hopefully some more good stories.