Day 55 Hitch Hiking

Today was easier than expected and we hitch hiked for the first time this trip.


I slept excellently last night. Tyler and Spencer said deer and owls kept waking them up but I slept straight through. I woke up around 6 and started packing up at 6:30. We started hiking just before 8.


Before 11AM we hiked 6.5 miles to a shelter called The Priest, which is just on the side of Priest Mountain. We stopped planning to eat lunch. Most shelters have a small notebook where hikers can note that they stayed and mention things like animal sightings or useful bear hanging trees nearby, Given this particular shelter’s name, people add entries in the logbook confessing to different “hiking sins” ranging from things like littering to admitting to actual wrongdoing or law breaking. Some of the entries are pretty humorous. Anyway, we planned to eat lunch but noticed a piece of paper hanging up that said there was trail magic at a road crossing 5 miles away. We hiked the 5 miles and enjoyed hot food including pancakes, bacon, eggs, and hot dogs. This was the first official trail magic we have received since Georgia. 




With ten miles left to hike we set out from the trail magic around 1:30. The heat of the day only reached the upper 60’s today and the trail was much less steep than yesterday. We climbed uphill for around 6 miles to summit Three Ridges Mountain. There were some good views on the way up and at the summit. 





While resting on top of Three Ridges, Spencer realized there was a famous brewery and pub called Devils Backbone just a short distance from Reid Gap. To get to Reid Gap we would only need to hike an additional 0.7 miles past where we planned to camp then hitch hike 5 miles to the pub. This sounded much better than eating cold salami and cheese for dinner, especially since the pub allows thru hikers to camp in the back yard for free. The spontaneous change of plans was very fun. We pushed through the last 4 miles of the day and easily found a hitch in the back of some guy’s pickup truck. The pub is more like a ski resort than anything else, they have a whole campus, camp site, and complete restaurant. 





For dinner I had a beef sandwich, a pulled pork sandwich, and Spencer and I slit a brownie sunday. After dinner we walked over to the camp site and pitched our tents. 


Tomorrow we will hitch back to the trail and hike 19 miles to Waynesboro where we will spend the night and get our next resupply. The weather continues to look great and after Waynesboro we begin the 150 miles of the Shenandoah National Park. 


Goodnight,

Walker 





If you want to follow Tyler or Spencer, here are their logs as well:


Tyler: https://tylerat2024.blogspot.com/?m=1


Spencer: https://www.instagram.com/baxter.bound?utm_source=qr&igsh=MWx4MzRqa3M4dGk3Mw==

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