Was eager to leave behind the crowd at the shelter last night but it seems to tonight’s bunch is even weirder. The vow of silence guy is back, found out his name is Packrat. Not sure how he’s here; he left the shelter last night as it got dark and I didn’t see him all day, then he showed up late today. We also have a southbound fellow from Cleveland who apparently walked along the highway from there, across Pennsylvania to the AT and now south. Destination: Damascus, Virginia in order to work at some kind of whole earth farm. He’s carrying a school backpack and wearing something akin to skate shoes. He seems particularly interested in Packrat’s vow of silence and is trying to query him regarding “eastern religion” only to get nondescript gestures in reply. The only thing that could make for a more ridiculous collection of people would be for the umbrella packing mom/son to make an appearance. So, strange crowd. The shelter is sweet though. Spacious, with a full on covered picnic area, patio with chairs, and there was even supposed to be a solar powered shower, but it’s not working.
Today brought about an end to my time in SNP, the last several miles were particularly flat and particularly smooth. Strider said he met a couple heading south who had just finished that stretch and they were excited to find the AT was so easy and were now considering a thru-hike! “Was the whole trail like this?” they asked…
Even after the park boundary it was still a pretty easy day. The sun made an appearance for the first time in several days and time flew by as I listed to the audiobook 11/22/63 by Stephen King. Now that I’m feeling good and injury free and pretty much consistently starting the day well before 8:00 I’m strongly considering increasing the mileage. The Rylu plan has been the AWOL 15 mile a day plan, but he also has an 18 mile a day plan. There’s some really long days in the 18 plan but for several hundred miles the terrain is extremely flat (although rocky) compared to the first thousand miles. By adding an average of 3 miles a day I could be done a full two weeks earlier, although I’d probably switch back to the 15 for the more difficult White Mountains and Maine sections. Another big plus would be carrying less food since I would be getting to towns more frequently.