Two Milestones
It’s almost 9 o'clock in the evening on June 9 — just about my bedtime — and I’m at a stealth camping spot just north of the Swift Run Gap entrance to Skyland Drive and Shenandoah National Park. It's the entrance where Route 33 crosses through the park. So, I've walked from highway 64 up to 33. Until now, I'd only ever done that in a car.
I woke up this morning at the Loft Mountain campsite after a reasonably fitful night of sleep. There was a young family in the site adjacent to mine, and they had a baby that I think might have been teething. So in the middle of the night, the baby woke up and had kind of a nuclear meltdown and woke up everyone in the entire campsite. Not their fault, of course, but definitely not what I was expecting when I rented the spot.
So I got up, took advantage of the real plumbing at the campsite, which was fantastic, and was on my way shortly after 7 o'clock. I’m still enjoying my granola and Carnation Instant Breakfast and powdered milk combination for breakfast. It's really been working for me, though I don't think it necessarily hits me right away. I always start out feeling very sluggish in the morning, but then by about mid-morning, I'm feeling good. I guess it just takes a little while to kick in.
It was another beautiful day, though the hiking wasn't particularly remarkable. I didn't go over any notable peaks and didn't really see a whole lot. I did, however, hit two milestones. One was crossing the 900-mile mark on the AT, and the other was reaching my unofficial goal of hiking 10 miles by noon. By 12 o’clock today, I was at 10.5 miles, so that was great.
I generally felt good hiking, and although the trail had a lot of ups and downs, in Shenandoah, they’re not as extreme as the ones I was dealing with earlier in Virginia, so that’s nice. I got to a shelter by about 2:30 in the afternoon, and at that point, I’d gone 14.5 miles. It felt too early to stop hiking for the day, so I refilled my water, chugged a bunch of it, and then checked the Far Out app to see what was coming up. I noticed this stealth camping site just north of the Route 33 park entrance, so I set my sights on getting here and managed to do 18.2 miles. That felt good, and now I've got the stealth spot to myself for the night.
Tomorrow, I hope to hit Big Meadows and have lunch there. I’ve seen some comments on Far Out that the blackberry milkshakes are running out for the season, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they’ll still have some when I get there.
