Tuesday may 7

Today we slack packed. We got up at 5:30am, in anticipation of being shuttled to lickskillet gap (where we were picked up on Saturday). What actually happened if that we just left from here (woods hole hostel). We walked half a mile down the road and walked the trail north to south. It was a very nice walk today. The air was so humid that I couldn't tell if it was morning fog or rain.  Once on the trail, the first 3 miles  were through burnt forest. It always looks strange without all the undergrowth. The next 3 miles were down what looked like an OLD logging road.  The trail was down one side of a wide flat cut along the side of the mountain. The next mile or so was downhill to wapiti shelter. I wasn't the only thing going down hill. It's been raining for 3 days. Lots of water. Oftentimes the path of least resistance happens to be the Appalachian trail! All the streams were very much rain swollen, making some of the crossings require creativity. Where I would normally cross was either completely submerged (the stepping stones) or unreachable from solid ground. We finally made it to trents grocery as it started to rain harder. After a lengthy discussion (HA, ha, ha) zag and I thought we'd just call for our ride from here. I haven't been in a place like trents grocery in a long time. Of course there's a limited assortment of groceries and snacks. What's so great is that mixed in with the food are fishing, boating, trailer, hunting & plumbing supplies & hardware. Backpacking supplies, too. We needed a snack, so we bought 5 little packs of saltines, pimento cheese,  2 pieces of Colby cheese, v8, tea. We sat at a little table, checked our email, made hotel reservations for Blacksburg (love Priceline), and ate our snack. All while we watched it rain and waited for our ride. Neville picked us up and on the way back to woods hole, we stopped by an Amish grocery store.
Too many yummy trays and good smelling homemade soaps...I bought a fig bar and made quick work of it on the easy back top the hostel.
Maybe Andrea and Emily will want to hike 5 miles with us when they visit this week...

Pics: new growth from the burnt forest floor.