Day 52, Wednesday, April 4. Laurel Fork Shelter—15 miles

We slept pretty well last night even with the running stream two feet from the tent—only two trips out to make sure all was well in the night. Bunny was a bit slow moving (after all, it was morning) but she was alert and inquisitive today. She put on her inspector hat and determined where Scars had slept last night while we were walking. She found a dry spot with flattened leaves near Laurel Fork Creek just a mile past where we camped. All those hours of watching forensic shows is finally paying off in a big way!

It’s great being on the trail between bubbles (or maybe the reality is we are just far enough along the trail that there aren’t going to be any more crowds). We only saw one person all morning and it was a sobo girl just 406 miles from finishing. She had on a Wisconsin hat and was from Madison. I asked her why she was so late finishing and she told us that she had been forced off of the trail for three months because of a stress fracture and had just gotten going again in March. (Fracture is a very scary word to thru-hikers!)

We made the eight miles to Moreland Gap Shelter and were going to have some lunch. It was windy and cold. Since I was a bit ahead of Bunny, I decided to show her what a sweet, wonderful, and thoughtful husband she has by making her some hot tea for lunch to take the edge off. The sign in the shelter said water was only 50 yards down a side trail. 50 yards my ass! By the time I got back with water, the shelter had filled up.

Stickers was the first to show up followed by Lady Bug. We moved the picnic table behind the shelter to get it out of the wind. Donut and Zee German arrived just as we got the table situated. Curb arrived just as we were finishing lunch. We had thought that he and Vagabond Jack were going to stay at this shelter but the wind was straight into the shelter. Curb said that the plan had changed and they were going on another couple of miles to a protected campsite.

It was cold walking in the wind, but when we managed to get on the leeward side of the mountain it became rather nice. Bunny and I were making pretty decent time and were a bit ahead of Lady Bug and Stickers. We thought Donut was way out front, but rounded a curve and found her frozen in place on the trail. We thought it was too cold for snakes—it was. It was something even more alluring—she had found good phone signal and stopped to surf and text. She was a living statue with mobile fingers.

We got down to the road at Dennis Cove and I was spent. There was a hostel, Kincora, just 0.2 miles down the road and I would have been willing to stop a couple miles shy of our goal for the day. This hostel is run by Bob People’s, a legend in the AT community and is one of only 3 living members of the AT Hall of Fame. It was Lady Bug who said we should stick with the plan and move on to Laurel Fork Shelter, and boy, did she make the right call!

Laurel Falls invigorated us. It started out as an easy walk along the Elk River that quickly turned into a rocky walk with lots of steep climbs and declines over boulder fields and rock walls. We crossed the river a few times and came up to a rock wall in front of us. Stickers looked under the bridge and saw some trash that someone was too lazy to carry out, so he jumped town to pick it up, only, it wasn’t trash at all. It was Hoho’s, POP-tarts, and sodas—trail magic! It was the sugar revitalization we needed to keep moving.

As we climbed the stone steps down to Laurel Fork Falls, we ran into a couple and their two dogs climbing up. This was the couple that left the food under the bridge and left even more down below at the falls. They are from Oklahoma and were returning from a trip to Washington DC. They had their two dogs with them so they couldn’t continue down the river valley where they told us there were some tight squeezes next to the river. They also shared that their St Bernard shat in front of the White House (but they cleaned it up). Even dogs are getting political these days.

Trouble started for me almost as soon as we got to the shelter. It was cold and windy so I got started boiling water for tea right away. I spilled my tea—major catastrophe (at least it is when I had to walk 1/4 mile for water, I’m tired, it’s cold, and my wife is in the shelter out of the wind—yes, it was her fault).  I recovered and kept going on with cooking supper for my bride while she was warm and out of the wind. By the time I finished dinner (from scratch—I started with empty water bags and finished with mashed potatoes with bacon bits) it was dark.

I was shaking from fatigue, yet I let my wife get ready for bed while I hung the bear bags in the dark. I calmly filled the rock bag and shakily attached it to the bear rope carabiner to throw over a limb. I wound up and made a perfect toss right where I wanted on the first try, only the rock bag wasn’t attached to the carabiner. I successfully threw my bag down into a rock filled valley in the dark. There may have been cursing—long drawn out cursing that surely scared any bears within 5 miles well away from the shelter. Stickers ran over and showed me that I hadn’t lost my rope since it was still on the ground beside me.

I eventually found another spot and got the bear bags hung, but I was more than tired and ready for bed. The shelter was amazingly quiet when I finally got into bed. I guess my stress level was calming on everyone else (or they were all laying wide awake with eyes wide open and afraid to move). Whatever the case was, it was quiet and I quickly fell asleep since the shelter was oriented in the correct direction to keep all the wind out. If a bear does get my food, I hope he chokes o it after all the trouble I went through tonight.