Day 38

Day 38: 23 miles

Today might’ve been the biggest 180 weather-wise so far. All morning it was super foggy and it felt like it could’ve started raining or snowing at anytime. But in the afternoon it cleared up and ended up being a beautiful day. That just doesn’t happen much out here. If it’s crappy it usually stays crappy.

I got to BlackRock lookout just before the sunset which was a nice scene, didn’t want to stick around to wait for it though, had to keep moving.

There was snow on the trail all day today but thankfully it wasn’t too much. It’s enough to slow me down but not drastically.

I bought 4 days of food for this stretch. 4 days was probably more than enough and very much for the worst case scenario of me moving really slow. But in addition to buying 4 days of food. I definitely bought more than I needed cause of a few factors: my leftover food and my great hosts feeding me. So my pack felt pretty heavy and uncomfortable today. But that’s just motivation to eat more. Although maybe if I’m lucky I can stretch it out an extra day or 2 and skip getting off trail to resupply in Luray.

I passed over Little Calf Mountain today and was surprised to not see @grant_hersh up there. Seems like his kinda place

Tonight is my first time sleeping in a “privy bivy” aka sleeping on the floor in a bathroom. The camps are a little more sparse in the Shenandoah and I didn’t want to push on a lot farther. I was so nervous walking up to it that it would be locked because of winter or covid or who knows but thankfully it was unlocked and I breathed a sigh of relief. Going in I figured I’d sleep in the women’s because guys are disgusting and it’d probably be cleaner but it appears somebody had an explosion in there😬. Not really sure why I’m mentioning the word clean when I’m sleeping in the floor in a privy. My standard of living has always been low but this might take the cake. Can’t complain about being enclosed in 4 walls tho

Song of the day: none, I lost my earbuds recently