Waynesboro to Buena Vista (Photos)

After Shenandoah (and before the stretch arriving in Daleville, which featured all the rain), we went from Waynesboro to Buena Vista. (This ended with the ride into BV with Greg of the spare tire.)

We crossed the 38^th parallel! We have or will come close to a few confluences, though I opted not to visit the one in northern Virginia; but a half-confluence seemed worth admiring. (I scratched a notice on a rock for interested passers-by.)

Jo's sister sent her an inflatable lion in the first mail drop; she left it in the first shelter out of town as a southbound challenge, with a note saying: take me to Springer!

One needn't necessarily always sit on ledges.

Djangle, another southbounder we met, had been making trail guacamole for lunches; I decided to give it a try. (Verdict: tasty. Good change. Some work to make. Thanks Djangle!)

Most shelters around SNP had bear poles, for hanging food bags out of reach of bears (or varmints) — an easier alternative to throwing a rope over a tree branch. One had an excessively tall pole, without a matching excess of length in the hanging rod: Jo couldn't reach it; I could just barely; it seemed like a good subject for a trail register illustration.

Signage! When in doubt, [...] treat all water. Always be in doubt.

We sit (and admire rocks).

An downside to socks outside shoes: weed seeds.

We got to the Tye river — happily — while it was warm and sunny. We admired the foot bridge, and cooled our feet, and watered. (We were tempted to stay, but went up The Priest — a notorious three-mile climb on the A.T. — instead; but it was a good break before a strenuous climb.)

I saw another might-be-a-Black-Racer on the way up The Priest.

The top!

And, unexpectedly, we had a rendezvous with the lion! Ghost Pirate — who we saw again later to our ever-increasing surprise and delight — not only brought along the lion, but admired our colorful entries.

The view from Spy Rock was unusual in providing a full 360 degrees.

Tranquilizer dart? (In a tree, well above head height.)

We had been hearing what we thought might be thunder, or airplanes, or something, all day; as we were waffling at the shelter, it began to rain (probably the beginning of our edge of Nicole); eventually we had a fairly full shelter for the night (and we were glad we'd hesitated while we were dry).

Evening weather-light.

The trail up the morning's mountain featured wildflowers — novel and pretty, as a change from the typical constant forest.

Just before our ride into town, there was a water source. Typically signs will say ".2" or give some mileage off-trail for the source; this one turned out to be .3 (a long walk when unexpected), and on examining the sign when I got back, it turned out a number of people previously had annotated the sign with their unhappy discoveries (most visible is the pencil on the post above the sign).