pass mountain hut to front royal, va

so many big days lately. today we did 26 miles into front royal. thankfully the weather held off and aside from a small sprinkle just after we left shenandoah we stayed dry.

we didn’t leave from camp particularly early despite plans to. i hiked the first part of the morning alone, arriving at one of the shenandoah stores around 10. black paws had left earlier and was taking a break there. he was limping pretty badly as he’s also been doing some big miles, but in his sandals it’s taking it’s toll on his feet. he’s also got an pretty bad case of home sickness for his partner.

bugs, lyric, and rocket arrived shortly and we all bought snacks at the store. rocket and i each bought a beer as well. we chatted while we ate and made plans to meet up at a shelter about 6 miles ahead for lunch. black paws got going first, but i passed him pretty quickly.

i got to the lunch shelter around noon. it was in a pretty setting surrounded by grass and some springs. black paws arrived a bit later and we chatted about the mental difficulties of the trail over lunch. the rest of the tramily hadn’t arrived yet so we soaked our feet in the spring, or at least tried to, it was so cold. eventually we figured out that the other three must have passed, so i packed up and got back on trail.

at some point i got cell service and got a text that the other three had gone to a mountain top for lunch. i caught up pretty quickly and hiked with them the rest of the afternoon.

we passed out of shenandoah and did a few more miles to a road where we could hitch. a section hiker picked us up and brought us to the brewery in town which was next to the outfitter, and had free showers and laundry. we tossed our laundry in and our driver insisted on buying us a round of beers!

after another round and some food, our laundry was done and we each took showers before heading to the hotel where we dropped our stuff and went across the street for some barbecue.

after barbecue we went to the movie theater and watched dr. strange. it was good but sitting for that long was hard for us. we finally got back to the hotel room around 23:30.

some additional images from today: