May 28-29 in central VA

May 28, 2005 | Day 62 | Miles: 19.5 | Total Miles: 752.5
End: unofficial campsite by stream, Tent
Danielle:
Morning clouds and sprinkles, afternoon sun
Happy 2 month anniversary on the trail to us! Pretty cool, huh? Amazing to think we've been out here this long, but yet it seems so short too. Crazy. We celebrated by doing a long day in which 5m of the last 6.2m were a big, long uphill. I'm tired out :-) But of course it's a good, wholesome tired out...
It was a nice walk today. Went through lots of blooming mountain laurel and rhododendron, which was really nice. Saw a few lizards, one deer, a turtle way up the hillside--what was he doing there? He had a black shell and yellow-orange markings--, a toad, a little snake swimming in the river where we sat on the rocks and ate lunch and tons of tadpoles in the same spot, plus lots of the brown, prehistoric cent/millipede things we've been seeing along the trail recently.
We're currently camped by a random stream 1.2m past the Cornelius Creek Shelter. We had planned to camp there but there were no flat tent spots, so we kept on pushing for a bit more. There are two other thru-hikers, who we just met, camped nearby.

Ryan:
am clouds and sprinkles, pm sun.
it's amazing what the body can do. we were beat when we stopped at cornelius creek shelter, but we pushed another 1.2 after we heard that the shelter was a real mouse house and couldn't find anywhere to set up the tent. so, we had to wait a little longer to cook dinner, but we found a pretty nice spot by a little stream. significant milestone missed in yesterday's journal: we hit the one third mark. yup, we've now hiked more than 1/3 of the at. we're a bit amazed. today also marked our 2 month anniversary. we've been walking for two months. seems like it's been a lot longer and a lot shorter at the same time. virginia is still proving to be nothing like we heard: flat, ugly and boring. we had a good climb at the end of the day today. and the views have been pretty nice, especially when we cross the blue ridge parkway, which it looks like we're going to be doing a bunch in the upcoming days. sometimes, they route us below the road through a space that has been cleared so the cars on the road have a view. the hikers don't get to see anything from our symbolic lower elevation. we just get to revel in the irony of being 2nd class citizens. oh, you're fat and consuming oil...well, enjoy the view.

May 29, 2005 | Day 63 | Miles: 17.3 | Total Miles: 769.8
End: unofficial campsite by Matts Creek and James River, Tent
Danielle:
Sunny all day
After a nice quiet night by the stream, we got on the trail at 8:30am so we could meet our friend's Aaron and Neha at the Thunder Ridge overlook off the Blue Ridge Parkway. We had talked to them on Thursday night and they said they would come camp out Saturday night and meet up with us for a bit. Cool! We awed them with our stink :-) but they took us into town anyway in their car for lunch. Thanks guys!
Glasgow, VA is not a big place but it did have Mom and Pop's Restaurant, which in its diner-esque way filled our bellies up. Then, after our nice 3 1/2 hour break for lunch and hanging out with Aaron and Neha, we were back on the trail. 11 miles to go... I was hoping to not get into camp too late, so I pushed the pace a bit and we made it to the shelter in 4 hours. Not too shabby. However, it was like a convention there with tons of tents up already and tons of people. It's pretty close to the road, plus it's the holiday weekend meaning there are lots of people out. So on we pushed for another 0.7m and we're now in a small little site by a creek that drains into the James River. It's pretty loud with the road, the frogs and birds, but only 1.5m to the road tomorrow and Aaron and Neha are outdoing themselves as our friends and meeting us at 9am to drop us back in Glasgow so we can resupply for the next 5 days into Waynesboro. Thanks again guys :-)

Ryan:
sunny, pm stormish looking clouds
we did the last 11.8 miles today in 4 hours and 15 minutes! danielle was on fire! tik, tik, tik, tik, tik, tik. sure, she takes 5 steps to every 1 of mine, but no matter, she was hauling. mostly due to the fact that we didn't start those last 11.8 until after 2:15. "must finish before dark." good reason to be delayed, though: our friend aaron who lives in d.c. picked us up and took us to lunch. (btw, lunch was a very large salad, mozzerella sticks and a bacon cheeseburger...mmmmm) we also got to meet his fiance, neha. that was great. what wasn't so great was that he failed to prepare her for our hunger, our smell, or my skirt. she had no idea what to make of the thruhikers. pretty comical. they're scheduled to pick us tomorrow morning and give us a ride into town to resupply...hopefully, we didn't repulse her too much, or else, we're going to be hungry. in other news, we climbed highcock knob today. (honestly, who names these things...)