Today's miles 10.6. AT miles 531.2
Today our lovely hiker bubble of seven, Team Berlin, Iron Man, Extra Miles and ourselves, split into two. Pillow, one of the German bothers, joined Iron Man and Extra Miles. The three guys are faster hikers and wanted to push on with the miles to get to Woods Hole, about 5 days away. So we are now a smaller, but still a lovely bubble of four, Wall E, Milk Monster and ourselves have planned the same schedule for the next few days to Woods Hole.
We were the last to leave camp this morning at 9:30, we only had 10 miles to walk so weren't in a hurry. It was another warm sunny morning. It was a fairly easy trail today, not a lot of elevation change. Down a bit then up onto a ridge line. The ridge line however was a bit like our English coastal paths, you think its going to be flattish but instead has lots of small ups and downs. I saw a small furry ginger coloured animal today running along a log which I think must have been a Deer Mouse. Our first new mammal siting for a while. Spring is nearly upon us in the woods too. The last couple of days in the warm sunshine we've noticed a few small plants trying to emerge from the forest floor. It should get really interesting over the next few weeks seeing the forest come to life. We arrived at Mount Rogers Visitors Centre at 1pm. We had a look around the visitors centre which was quite interesting and bought a nice cold Pepsi, it was getting hotter outside.
We needed to get from the visitor centre to Marion town 6 miles away. There was a shuttle service from the centre into Marion but it wasn't until 2:45pm and it had to be prebooked so we decided to try our luck at hitching a ride, our first hitch hiking experience on the AT. We waited about 25 minutes trying to get a ride, there weren't that many cars going past, and we were about to give in and go and phone for the shuttle when someone kindly stopped, a gentleman and his wife from Marion. He worked for the forest service and was supposed to be organising a controlled forest burn like we'd past a few days ago but it was too windy. They very kindly dropped us off at the Travel Inn motel where we are staying the night. Milk Monster and Wall E were not far behind us, they also managed to hitch a ride.
We had a lovely shower, first on the list every time we hit town and then went food shopping for the next 5 days. We bumped into Trish and Jesse in the supermarket too, they also decided to stay at the Travel Inn. It was Trish's 30th birthday today so the six of us arranged to go to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. We had a lovely meal then Jesse ordered a birthday dessert from the waitress for Trish. Apparently, so he thought, the staff usually produce a dessert and sing happy birthday. Not this time. A handful of staff came over with a dessert, which I did think at the time looked a bit like a typical English custard pie prank type pie, and started feeding Trish with the cherries off the top of it, a bit strange but nothing compared to what followed. Next they started squirting a crown of squirty cream on top of Trish's head and then proceeded to rub it all over her face. We were gobsmacked, amazed, laughing our socks off, Trish a real sport, took it all in her stride. Very very funny.
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