June 25, 2011
Start: 902.2 South River picnic area.
End: 933.1 Panorama rest area.
Total: 30.9 Miles!!!
Last night the stars were amazing, the best of the whole trip, to this point. I forgot what a dark clear moonless sky looked like. Stars filled every portion of the sky. It was actually quite cool and breezey also. I wore my Patagonia nano puff synthetic jacket all night. My picnic table made the perfect roost away from the crawly things. At six I awoke with my alarm, fell back to sleep for half an hour, took a Vivarin, then slept another hour. People were already coming to other tables to eat breakfast. It was good to get an extra hour and a half of sleep. Yesterday's 35.3 mile day drained me. Not today I tell myself, sub thirty today, no more.
The other crew still has their tents set up, a unwise thing while openly camped illegally in a park, when I head over to say high after eight. I didn't camp illegally, I was just pinicing, or maybe just resting. I head to use the nice restroom, on the way back I catch a brief glimpse of a law enforcement ranger, leaving. He told the section hikers that they couldn't camp here, or any other illegal place. He didn't write any tickets though, so the crew got lucky.
I take off and try to make the miles. I do a really good job at it, in fact. The big priority is to finish the trail and get back to Flagstaff, Az. by August 27. I start school on the twenty ninth. I worry about the late start today, but the trail is cruising again and the miles quickly pass. The trail is busy today, to say the least. I'm passing several camp grounds and two lodges today where I could eat and charge my phone. I choose to pass the lodges as they would surely be expensive to buy food at, and a waste of time. I choose to take my first break of the day, at one forty five, in a camp ground, and charge my phone in the bathroom for forty minutes.
After that it is more hustling down the trail for, to steal a line from Alex DeLarge, your humble narrator and only true friend. Just before seven, I take another break at the Pinnacle picnic area, where a rather large Persian family is having a reunion.
These guys do it up right, they have large pits boiling water for tea, the largest tea pots that I have ever seen, and a spread of food, which unfortunately is being put away. I eat a three hundred calorie bagel with five hundred calories of pepper jack cheese, before I'm offered Cheetohs, a mountain dew and fruit by some of the girls in the group. They said they would look for cake too, but I said that I was fool, which was true. These guys had Persian rugs arranged on the ground around large platters of fruit. I like the rug idea, plus ten pounds of grapes is never bad.
I hustle on passing Byrd's shelter, named after the group I believe, at my twenty eighth mile of the day. There is still an hour left in the day, so I head two point nine miles further to the Panorama roadside rest area, which has water and is near the trail.
The water at Panorama is contaminated with E. colli, so I treat it with MSR Sweetwater drops, and drink up. I find an outlet on the outside of the building so I charge my phone completely while setting up camp and eating my Ramen noodles. I cowboy camp again under the stars. The two picnic tables here are pretty bad, but a very wide old stone staircase offers a large flat spot to roost. I will be out of the rangers sight here as well, protected by stone walls.
Tomorrow it is only twenty eight miles to town. I will either wait by the road, and hitch in in the morning, or get my hat trick for camping three nights illegally in a row. I figure that there must be a park in town to stealth camp in. Then I can resupply, and hit the list office early. There is a restaurant called Hong Kong in Front Royal, Va. too, which I am hoping is a Chinese buffet.
Though for now it's starry skys, lightening bugs and mire cool gentle breezes.
Good night.
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