2017 Appalachian Hike

I am now in Shenandoah National Park. Here the shelters are called huts. Still the same thing. I didn’t get a picture of it and now it’s dark. I didn’t get here until about 7:00pm. 

I had a pretty challenging day today. We ate motel breakfast and then took a shuttle from there to the trailhead. We started about 9:00am. 

Waynesboro got over two inches of rain last night and there was some flash flooding in town. The river was out of its banks. 

When we started on the trail it was foggy and raining lightly. The trails were mostly like running streams   My feet were completely soaked almost immediately. The rocks were slippery and parts of the trail were slippery mud. 

Within the first hour I was attempting to climb over a rock. I lost my grip and fell backwards. I landed hard on my butt and then almost did a backwards somersault over my back pack. 

Now hiking became painful. I kept going until a little after 1:00 and stopped at Sawmill Run Overlook for lunch. The sun had come out by now also so I wanted to take my shoes and socks off to clean and dry them a bit 

Timber joined me. We both spent about 45 minutes eating and soaking up the sun. In the meantime the bruise on my butt was tightening up and feeling worse. 

We were only about half way at this point. Timber and I hiked together off and on the rest of the day. It was a real struggle. 

There are a lot of people at this campsite. Luckily there was still room in the shelter for me. Setting up my tent would have been a challenge. Engineer, Timber and Maple Syrup are here. Alps and Captain are here to. Alps is from Switzerland and Captain is from Chapel Hill N C. There are others I don’t know including a couple from Denmark. 

I’m anxious to see what tomorrow brings. Sometimes bruises are worse the next day. I may not be able to keep up with my friends.