A final chegou!

Wow. The Shenandoahs were such an awesome end of my trail adventure this time around. I only hiked about 30 miles into SNP, but it was a wonderful 30 miles. The trails are wider, the hills are rolling and the switchbacks are a plenty.

I've never seen a rattle snake in the wild, but I saw two rattlers in one day. It was pretty cool. The first one was quite skittish and slithered away pretty fast when Rylu, Strider and I found it. The second one I was all alone and he was a bit more territorial. He hoped just off the trail and just stared at me. He sat like that for a moment and I started getting annoyed that he wasn't going away. So I threw a rock at him. That was a bad idea. He immediately coiled up and started his rattling. And there he sat and rattled for about 10 min. And probably longer than that, I just was done after 10 min. Not impressed Mr. Rattler. Not impressed. I went totally around the trail by bush whacking a little bit. He was still rattling as I hiked away. Little bugger. 

Atop of Blackrock. Simply beautiful to sit and enjoy and be. Had I known that view was there I'd have hiked up for sunrise. 

The lovely, lively group all together: me, Rylu, Strider and Jupiter. I'm telling you, we're pretty precious. 

I finished my hike at the Loft Mountain Wayside, 886.5 miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia. I hiked a total of 418.5 miles in 25 days. Not too shabby. To celebrate I ordered this humongous cheeseburger.

Someday I will really get a hiker's stomach. I felt like a wimp, I couldn't even finish the burger, but I had a big plate of fries to eat too, and if it's ever fries vs burger, I'm always going to try to finish the fries and sacrifice the burger. Deal with it. 

From Loft Mountain I said goodbye to my little hiker family and hitched a ride with a nice Canadian couple back to Rockfish Gap and from there I got a ride from the famous Dubose "Yellow Truck" Egleston back into Waynesboro. I went to Walmart and bought some clothes so I'd have something besides hiker clothes to wear on the train to DC. This fabulous girl and her equally fabulous husband drove down from Cville to pick me up. They gave me a shower, a shaver, a delicious Thai meal, a bed and ride to the train the next morning. Modern day heroes I say. 

God bless the Bosts. 

Now it's off to DC to spend some quality time with Ceff.