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This was another day of slick, muddy footing. The rain and mist obscured all views. We just slogged along all day. We arrived at the shelter at 7 pm and decided to stay. Three hikers came in at dark to fill the shelter.

This was also a wonderful trail magic day. Our morning granola bar was scheduled for a road crossing. Two churches had a cooler of iced bottled juices and a garbage can just past the road. So we had juice and bars...yum.

The rain cleared up by early afternoon and at the road to Bland we spread out gear to dry in the sun. Day hikers followed us to the trail head and offered to take our trash! I love to lighten my backpack in any way so the offer was quickly taken up. A short ways away we crossed a stream with Coke chilling in the water. That was our drink with our afternoon snack!

At 4 pm we got to the last water source for 10 miles and it was off trail by .5 mi and is unreliable. We decided we could go the 10 miles with the water we had (not enough for dinner and breakfast) so we sped up the the trail and 4 hours later got to water at the shelter. We climbed over our second Brushy Mtn of the day in that 10 miles. We really had to hike fast to hike that mileage up and over. We enjoyed the challenge.

Wildlife sighting included the largest black snake so far and another box turtle that was not so shy so we have pictures of his nose out of his shell.
We decided to go to Woods Hole because of the breakfast served. It is slightly off trail and the quintessential AT experience. We enjoyed kicking back with the other hikers there: a mother/son pair from Atlanta, Martin from UK (read Bill Bryson's book), and a pair of women hikers from Salem, Mass. and Philadelphia). We each cooked and ate our own dinners and we saw some interesting menus. Tilly Woods came home from Pizza Hut and gave us her leftover pizza which disappeared in a flash. We went to bed late and slept warm and toasty in the log barn. Solar showers were available but we haven't had much sun lately so we skipped that.

After breakfast we hiked a half mile up the road to the trail, then over a hill and down into Pearisburg. Just over the top of the hill we were seeing lots of flame azaleas. Then the rhoda dell appeared and we hiked through the color tunnel for about 2 miles. Many times the plants were 35 feet tall and back into the forest for as far as we could see. And they were all in full bloom.
We had repeated outstanding views of the Virginia hills from the ridge. Marcia heard voices from above as she climbed down from from Angels Rest. Ken said that Marcia should...

The 10 miles seemed longer than that. We both slipped and fell on the slick trail. We got a ride to the PO as soon as we hit town. Then we went straight to pizza.

We talked with lots of hikers. Only one left for the trail. We saw a few more hikers come in from the trail - they were soaked. We finally walked back to the motel and got the same room. Tomorrow will be a better hiking day.