#126 Daleville, VA to Bobblets Gap Shelter - Day 60: ATMM 730.3 to ATMM 748.8
I am dirty, smelly, wet, and tired. All is as it should be. I am in tune with the trail.
4/30/22
It’s nice to wake up in a bed, clean, rested, with dry gear hanging around the room, but it’s time to pack it all up and get back to what I came to the mountains to do - Hike!
After surveilling all week my heart’s reaction to the trail, and finding no indication of trouble, I decide it’s alright to move on to my next point of decision - Glasgow VA, sixty miles away.
BREAKFAST!! Being in no hurry to leave I take my time. The absence of other hikers in the dining room puzzles me a bit. Are they still in their rooms? Are they already on the trail?
I share the room with two other people. I’ve been around enough to know they aren’t a couple but their relationship is business in nature. I guess I’ve not been around enough discern who owes who the money.
I move my attention back to my breakfast. After several trips to the breakfast bar, I finally have my fill.
Passing through the hotel lobby I drop a few food items into the Hiker Box (box designated for hikers to leave or pick up random items for and from one another; food, duct tape, socks, gear, etc.), then it’s back to the trail by way of the median that runs down the middle of the four lane highway, of course.
Soon after leaving town I come to a sign taped to a telephone pole letting north bound hikers know they’ve completed one third of the Appalachian Trail. This is a major milestone. I need only to do all I’ve done since 2015 two more times to complete the trail.
It seems I’ve come so far, yet it seems I have an insurmountable feat ahead of me. Some things seem impossible to do but it’s always best to focus on one step, one mountain, and one day at a time.
I’ve heard it said that life is like a bowl of salsa - the choices you make today might burn your ass tomorrow. Well, shortly after passing the sign and crossing some railroad tracks my stomach warns me that the choice I made last night to devour a whole jar of salsa is about to burn my ass real soon. I find a spot off trail just in the nick of time.
After rolling over a few foothills I begin the first real climb of the day but the fifteen hundred foot ascent is spread out over five miles and surprisingly gradual.
The Fullheardt Knob Shelter, built in 1965 by Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club, which sits on the very top of the mountain, is said to be the last shelter on the Appalachian Trail to use a cistern system to capture drinking water for hikers. The gutters catch rainwater from the roof and send it to a reservoir behind the shelter. Pipes lead from the reservoir to a spigot a little farther behind the shelter.
I take a break with Red Squirrel, who camped in the field with me at Four Pines Hostel a few nights ago, and Rolo, who I’m meeting for the first time. We start joking and laughing so much it seems a shame to leave but I have many miles to hike today. Sprinkles begin falling as soon as I leave the shelter. I stop to put on my rain jacket and pack cover.
A mile or so down trail, Rolo catches up and we walk together for a while. My iPod volume is turned down low, I’m conversing with Rolo, sprinkles fall around us, I begin to settle into a good pace on this long descent when…..
Oh crap! I recall setting the Ziploc bag with my map, phone, and notebook inside on the picnic table by the shelter but don’t recall picking it back up. I panic. My phone is my communication with the outside world. My map is my guide for hiking the trail. My notebook is my blueprint for writing these stories when I get home.
I walk twenty feet off the trail and strap my pack to a tree before walking/running back up the mountain.