We made it through the night and day without any bears. We had a nice camp spot near the summit of Blackrock. I scrambled up to the top before we left camp since I didn’t get a chance to last night with the lightning.
View from summit of Blackrock scramble
We kept on trucking through the park the rest of the day. There were a lot of volunteers out today from the Potomac Trail Club doing maintenance. Many thanks to these awesome people. It was literally the first time I have seen the trail being mowed with a push mower, so that was amusing.
Almost every couple of miles we crisscross Skyline Drive. This gets us relatively close to the Waysides in the park, which are like a rest stop, diner, and souvenir stand built into one fortress of awesome.
Loft Mountain Wayside. We walked an extra mile to get to this one.
We took advantage of this by having some delicious fried food for lunch instead of our normal boring pepperoni or peanut butter gruel. So good. There are 2 more left that we get close to so it will be hard to pass them up.
The rest of the day we pushed on through some small climbs and mostly smooth and easy trails. The park is cool but surprisingly a little bit less scenic than central Virginia and certainly less so than I expected considering it’s a national park. Perhaps it will get scenicier (not a real word for sure) further north.
There are not a lot of thru-hikers here in the park it seems. For the first time in the whole trip we are starting to be a novelty to people that realize that we are thru-hiking and that we are insane enough to have hiked to that point from freaking Georgia. Section hikers today were asking us for advice on hiking, so that was cool and a bit weird.
Tomorrow it’s more of the park and another Wayside in the afternoon (score!!!). We had awesome weather today and tomorrow looks similar.
Vital stats :
Milestone – over 900 miles from freaking Georgia!
Miles hiked today – 23.3 (technically 24.3 because of the Wayside but I don’t count that)
Mood – good
Physical state – normal
Smell – like when a bag of potatoes has gone way past its prime
Song stuck in my head – Surrender by Hardly The Hero
I do not understand why anyone would think it’s insane to hike 900+ miles when you have 2 perfectly good cars! 🙂 However, they are seeking advice from people whom they believe are insane. Hmmmmm. Have to think about that one! Great photos. I think I don’t want to know how high up you were to get the first one! Glad you had some more interesting food rather than the trail food. BTW, we’re counting you and Katie as 5 people for the picnic! 🙂 Looking forward to seeing you. Stay safe and healthy. Sending sane thoughts, prayers and lots of love.