Today's miles 20.6. AT miles 878.5
Today was our wettest day on the trail so far! Cindy kindly drove us back to Rockfish Gap to rejoin the trail. We thanked her for all her help and hospitality and got a lovely photo of me and her. What a great lady. It was about 9.30 when we hit the trail entering Shenandoah National Park. We first had to obtain a Backcountry Permit to be able to overnight hike in the park. The permits are free but compulsory, if we didn't get one there would be a fine.
The morning started off nice with sunny spells. It all changed just before noon, we had on and off rain showers followed by heavy rain and thunderstorms in the afternoon. We walked in the rain for about four hours. Too warm really for waterproofs. Nigel has his waterproof jacket on but was still soaked, I was soaked on my bottom half, my trusty umbrella kept the top half of me dry. Luckily the rain stopped just after 4pm and the sun came out to dry us off.
The first part of the trail in the park was a bit unattractive, we passed an array of communication towers and then some power lines. The trail then turned nice and the paths all good going. The Blue Ridge Parkway has now turned into the Skyline Drive which we crossed numerous times today and follow for the next hundred miles through the Shenandoah National Park (SNP). SNP has a few differences to the rest of the AT. Gone are the nice wooden signposts detailing directions and mileage at intersections, in SNP these are 4"x4" concrete posts which have all the information stamped into aluminium bands around the top of the posts, not so attractive and harder to read. Also 'shelters' are now called 'huts'. SNP is the place to see bears apparently, we didn't see any today, if they had any sense they be sheltering from the rain! Nigel did see a really large wild turkey though. The AT regularly crosses the Skyline Drive throughout the park. We are optimistically hoping with the weather forecast for a sunny weekend we may pass some burger or ice cream vans in the car parks.
We arrived at our camp spot for the night, Blackrock Hut at 5:30. There were three guys at the hut already then a few more hikers turned up later, lil Beast and her bubble of friends. Our German friends didn't arrive at the hut so we're not sure if they set out hiking or took another rest day in Waynesboro. They were hoping to be back on the trail today but Pillow had been feeling unwell the last couple of days. We miss our friends on the trail, especially in the evenings at the shelters.
Our new boots got a thorough testing today, 20 miles in the rain, we both had wet feet but that's all. No problems with them so far, we hope it stays that way.
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