April 20th, 2019, Virginia
Ryan and I ate a great breakfast of our leftover pancakes, peanut butter, and sliced bananas. We had just two pancakes left to bring along.
The hostel shuttled us back to the trail and we got started at 8:30am.
It was a long climb up from town and we took a few short breaks on the way up. Early on Ryan noticed an interesting mushroom which turned out to be one of a small group of morels. I still had signal and was able to confirm the identification online. We picked five nice mushrooms and brought them along to eat with dinner later.
Near the top of the first mountain we paused to eat a bit and make a phone call. We enjoyed the beautiful vista while we rested and ate.
We arrived to our intended stopping point early—before 2:30pm. This particular shelter didn’t have much in the way of hammock or tent sites. We found a place for Ryan’s hammock and worked together to get him set up. Rain was expected soon so I decided to help Ryan get a good setup for the hammock and just sleep in the shelter myself. Another guy called “Papa Smurf” had arrived and was planning to stay as well. Ryan and I collected water, made dinner, cleaned up, then retired very early. It was cold and already raining so climbing into a warm camp bed seemed the most logical thing to do. Papa Smurf and I talked for a while about what to expect to the north and south then I settled down for the night.
And here are a few other interesting things I saw today.
