Another easy day in an easy week. Had plenty of time to sleep in but I’m getting more accustomed to and fond of starting early, even on short days. The sky was blue, and for the first time in a while there were no exposed ridges or mountain balds to visit. The first five miles included the biggest uphill piece of the day (about 2 miles) but with the air was cool lower humidity I barely broke a sweat. Five miles in was the first shelter of the day, I could hardly believe it had already been five miles. It was only 11 and the day was almost half over. I collected water from a nearby stream and continued on. The dual Nalgene bottles are working great – I’m probably staying better hydrated and I know I’m carrying several pounds less water.
The final destination for the day on the 15mile plan was a campsite about 13 miles from the visitor center for the Jefferson National Forest. There’s a shelter only a few miles farther but Strider and I have learned to trust the guide. First of all it’s really nice to have this first week in Virginia be all low mileage, relatively easy days. There were a lot of tough miles in the first three states and this is a sort of break in the action before upping the miles again. Second, the choice of campsite was spot on. The place is tucked away down a little valley where an old shelter used to be. There were still blue blazes down the 0.2 miles from the AT but the trail was clearly seldom used. Strider and I both were here about 2 and we took advantage of the spare time to try something Strider had been wanting to do for a while – make a fire. As a general rule of thumb thru-hikers don’t make fires, no one wants to carry firestarters and no one wants to walk around looking for wood after a day of walking. It was mostly Striders project at first, he had been talking about making one for quite a while, so I figured he knew what he was doing but he wasn’t having much luck. Eventually I went to help, mostly deciding that he needed to stop using leaves, none were really totally dry, and that he needed to start with much smaller twigs. It took a few extra sheets of paper but we got something started finally around 4:30 and kept it going until after 9.