Today's miles 18.6. AT Miles 970.8
Last night we were camped uphill a bit out of view around the back of the shelter. We discovered this morning Iron Man, Doc and Mountain Mime where also at the shelter, plus two other guys, they'd come in late yesterday evening and we'd not realised. Someone had told us rumours that Doc and Mime had got off the trail so it was great to see them and that those rumours were false.
It was sunny but a bit cooler this morning, it did hotten up in the afternoon though. We left camp at our usual 9am, it was uphill first thing this morning to South Marshall Mountain and then North Marshall Mountain where there were great views. Doc kindly took a photo of both of us and we got a photo of Doc on a rock overlook. After the mountain top views it was a long steady downhill, a couple of small ups were thrown in, until we hit the northern boundary of Shenandoah National Park. Leaving the park we decided we were either just unlucky or just not very observant as neither of us spotted a bear whilst in the park.
We stopped at Tom Floyd Wayside for a snack break, it was just a shelter in the woods, not like the other Waysides. We continued downhill to a stream where we met a strange barefooted man foraging for spring mushrooms who we had a quick chat with. We bumped into Mountain Mime not long after. waiting for a hitch into Front Royal at US522. He said the mushroom guy was quite aggressive towards him, thinking he was also out looking for mushrooms. Out from the woods the trail down to the road ran down a grassy strip behind the backs of a few residential properties on one side and a six foot metal fence on the other ending with a short boardwalk to the road.
After the road it was a steady couple of miles uphill again, there were a few tree fall obstacles in the way. We were definitely out of the national park! Also being at a lower elevation, after all the rainfall a couple of days ago, the trail was quite wet and muddy in places with small streams of water running down the trail, it had remained dry higher up. We arrived at our camp spot, Jim and Molly Denton Shelter about 4:15pm. A lovely Shelter with a porch, separate cooking pavilion and a solar shower. The shower however had literally been just connected to the fresh spring water source as we arrived by the shelter maintenance guy, so no solar heated hot water today. We pitched our tent in the sun just behind the shelter next to some lovely daffodils.
There were four other section hikers camping at the shelter. Later Ravencloud and Frog Monkey arrived, who we last saw at Big Meadow campsite, plus another thru hiker, Cloudwalker we'd not met before. He's hiking 30 mile days, a nice guy but we won't see him again! When he's finished the AT in a couple of months he's going straight off the walk the CDT (Continental Divide Trail). We were all enjoying a lovely evening sat around on the shelter porch chatting. Our calm evening was soon interrupted though by a large group of noisy, excited kids from a church group out for a weekend camping trip. It was 10pm before they settled down and went quiet thanks to a complaint by Ravencloud and Frog Monkey, way past hiker bedtime!
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