The other hikers staying in the cabbin were up around 5:30 for a 6:30 breakfast and hit the trail before 7:30. They woke me up with their noise. But I would have woken up naturally soon after in any case. My breakfast was at 7:3]. It was good – coffee, a fruit plate, french toast – but the servings were kind of small by hiker standards and I left still feeling hungry.
Scott drove me to the supermarket at the south end of Front Royal where I resupplied as quickly as possible so that I could catch the “trolley” up to the phone repair shop.
I got there a half hour before opening time so walked to a nearby park to sit at a covered picnic table since it was already quite hot out. While there I thought I should remove the phone’s screen protector to see how much of the cracking was on the protector vs the screen. To my surprise it was only the protector that was cracked. The screen was in perfect shape.
One the store opened I explained the situation to the clerk. The repair technician wasn’t available to fix the phone anyway. And the back of the phone wound up not getting delivered, so there was nothing they could repair and no one to do it. They refunded my $200 deposit and off I went. I called Gumbo and by 11 I was in trail.
I stopped half a mile uptrail to put on sunscreen. Two Esses, Lone Star, Hootenanny, Uncle Science and Mojo all passed me while I was slathering it on. An hour later I stopped at a shelter for lunch; they were all there. Uncle Science and Mojo were putting out their air mattresses because they wanted to nap through the hot early afternoon, while the rest were eating.
I left first, but the threesome passed me as I peeled and ate a mango.
I didn’t have an ambitious distance planned for the day, since I wasn’t expecting to leave town until 12 or 1 and I have three days to cover 44 miles. Also the distribution of shelters meant either a very unambitious day or a dangerously overambitious one. I wound up doing only about eight miles. And of course the threesome were already at the shelter I came to. A section hiker named Eric was also there, no trailname. He thought maybe Red would be a good trailname because of Eric the Red, whereupon I named him Viking and he accepted.
Thunderstorms threatened through late afternoon but we had only 10 minutes of rain. The covered porch is huge and has a picnic table so we’re fine if the rain comes back.
Absolutely no views today so I only took a photo of the shelter. Time now to make dinner.
Mile 981.1 to 988.1 so a measly 7 miles