Got woken up pretty early for the second day in a row by the trio of Sleepwalker, Poptarts, and Argo talking loudly in shelter as soon as they wakeup. Should be the last day of that because they are planning on big 20 mile plus days. After those three left it was a pretty lazy morning, I actually made some hot apple cider and Strider and I stayed around until about ten hanging out with DJ, Lauren, and Elliot.
The miles flew by today, every time I came to a landmark on the map I couldn’t believe I was already that far. It was warm and sunny and it wasn’t even a particularly flat day so I guess what made it go so quick was the thought of pizza delivery 12 miles in. The AT crosses US 52 and the town of Bland, VA just a couple miles away has a pizza place that delivers to the trail. Strider hikes a bit faster than I do so the pizza was already on its way when I arrived. I had a whole pizza and a liter of pepsi meaning that I was stuffed and we had another 2 miles to hike. About a mile of that was straight up a mountain. Luckily, It was pretty early still so we just sat in the shade relaxing and digesting. I had been trying to get an opportunity to find some geocaches while on the trail, and here along the road was the first time that there was both 3g service and a cache nearby. It didn’t take long to find, but sadly there was nothing cool inside.’
After the geocache we walked down the road and under interstate 77 to where the trail reenters the woods. Just as we were about to go into the trees we saw the car from yesterdays trail magic. Punkin had said she would be doing more magic before Pearisburg because she picked up her husband every night. I think she was just scouting out spots to start him back tomorrow, but we waved and she stopped. I told her that Strider was the one that missed the trail magic yesterday because he walked past her just before she set up. She pulled out two cold one liter cans of Arizona half and half (iced tea/lemonade) for us. She had more food too but we were still gorged on pizza. From there we finally made it up the one mile climb and into Helvey’s Mill shelter. I made another fire tonight, definitely have the hang of that now. Miranda and her brother Landon are the only other ones here tonight, if it’s not raining they actually talk about stuff besides their hatred of being wet and are pretty cool.