Just to be clear, the mileage in the title is our distance from the northern terminus of the AT and no longer reflects the distance we have covered. We have hiked about 1100 miles so far.
Today we decided to only hike a couple miles and decided take the rest of the day to hang out in the woods. We stayed in a hiker pavilion built by the boy scouts in Glasgow, VA last night and picked up a care package from my lovely and generous friend Nicole at the post office. The shelter is wonderfully built and maintained but the town is small and it was hard to get a hitch back to the trailhead. We didn't start hiking until 11 and decided against pushing it 17 miles to the next water source (apparently it's dry in this area).
I have too many stories to share from Virginia already. Our best experience on the trail so far happened last weekend. We met a rad hiker named Stef and hiked with her for a few days in Shenandoah National Park. She took us to a folk, funk, and bluegrass music festival called Festy at a brewery a few miles from the trail. We spent the weekend getting down with the locals in the valley and it was incredible.
Now we are back up at high elevations and have been climbing more and walking around on ridgelines overlooking miles of Virginia wilderness.
Our only worry is the encroaching cold weather, particularly in the high elevations of the Smokies, but we can get through it! Less than 800 miles to go!
