Adventure.

Immediately after leaving Waynesboro, I entered Shenandoah National Park. This would be my second and final national park that I would experience on the Appalachian Trail. The Shenandoah section of the trail covers over 100 miles and provides some unique and welcome amenities.

One of the most noticeable differences was less elevation change. The Shenandoah’s are a big chain of mountains whose ridge lines essentially connect into one long string. There were no dramatic dips into lower elevations followed by giant climbs like the rest of the AT has essentially been up to this point. This provided an opportunity for me to stretch more miles with less effort.

After pulling 20 miles on my first day, it was a breezy 8-mile hike into Loft Mountain Campground. For a few days, we thru-hikers kept seeing ads for Neropalooza, which was described as a big, free cookout for all the hikers at the campground. Truckstop was the name of the trail angel who put it on, and he delivered in the most epic way. He had a trailer full of drinks: sodas, Gatorades, coffees, and beers. He manned the grill all afternoon, serving up venison fajitas, bacon burgers, and bear steak. Hikers pushed themselves to get there and even shuttled backward to attend. It ended up being a large reunion of faces I hadn’t seen for hundreds of miles. Truckstop had already reserved a large section of the campground for us to pitch our tents and enjoy the day into the night. Best of all, he refused to take any sort of donation and insisted this was the best way he could give back to the community. Neropalooza was an absolute blast, and I am very happy to have spent most of the day enjoying the event.

Being fully recharged, I was ready to push big miles. The next day, I ended up hiking 27 miles to yet another campground. The campgrounds in the Shenandoah were another unique experience only found in the National Parks. All campgrounds had a camp store with snacks, drinks, and ice cream. They had bathrooms with running water, and every site had a picnic table. It was $5 per person to camp at these, but all the amenities completely justified the cost.

And then there were the wayside stops. For a while, I’ve heard about these shops in the Shenandoah’s that served up hot food and milkshakes and were right off the trail. It was not until my fourth day in the park that I was able to get to one during operating hours, and I took full advantage. I got to the Big Meadows wayside at the tail end of their breakfast. I scarfed down a large breakfast burrito and hash browns while I waited an hour until their lunch started. I proceeded to smash a burger and some blackberry cobbler as soon as it was being served. Sadly, I was not able to experience their notorious blackberry milkshakes as their machine was out of order. However, I ended up very satisfied, as being able to walk into hot food off the trail was an absolute luxury.

Maybe a little too satisfied… One downside of the wayside was my complete lack of impulse control. I was completely full and still had planned another 16 miles to hike that day. I was on the struggle bus as the heat started to kick in as well. I was slow, hot, and I kept stopping for breaks. I realized I wasn’t going to make my planned destination, so I needed to come up with a plan B.

Now up until this point of my hike I have yet to camp by myself. This was the day I was about to expirence true stealth camping. I found a decent spot away from the trail, thanks to a FarOut comment earlier this year. I pitched tent, cooked dinner, and hung food while in the presence of a couple deer who did not seem to be bothered by me at all setting up camp in their yard. They co tinted to hang around until after sunset, and I was already tucked in.

Around 2:00 a.m., I was woken up by heavy footsteps about 30 feet from my tent. My brain started going through all the possibilities of what the noise could be. The noise was too consistent to be a rodent, too heavy to be a raccoon or fox, too late in the night to be a deer, too loud to be a bobcat, and the lack of light ruled out it being a human. I’m pretty sure I was visited by a black bear that night. The sound was a bit too far for me to want to investigate, and by the time I realized what it probably was, the footsteps were moving farther and farther away. Needless to say, I’ve had better nights sleep.

The rest of the Shenandoahs did not provide as great of stories, but they did provide some easy hiking. I ended up covering the 100+ miles in five days, even with the heat really dialing up. I headed into the town of Front Royal, VA, with my eyes on Harpers Ferry, WV.