July 5: Big Meadows, near a water fountain   Miles Today : 20.4 Total Miles : 91.7

I left the shelter this morning under a clear sky with mild temperatures. As has been the norm here in the Snooze-andoahs, the trail was very well graded and extremely well maintained, almost as if someone cleans the thing every morning. However, it can get a tad boring at times. As with the previous days, the deer were out in droves, and several times today I got within 5 feet of several different deer. They just have no fear of humans.

The terrain was especially easy today, and I was feeling really strong for the first time since Monday. I ate up the trail all the way to Lewis Mountain Campground. There, I ate up the camp store, pounding down a bunch of snacks and a big bottle of lemonade.

After getting a boost at the store, I powered up and over Bearfence Mountain, then I veered off the AT and over the Bearfence Rock Scramble. This trail takes the tough route over the mountain and requires the use of both hands in several locations. This was really a big point in the day for me, since this trail required the use of my brain, which has been in idle for most of the past few days. All of a sudden I had obstacles to overcome, I had physical problems to solve. Then, before I knew it, I was standing at the top of the mountain on this beautiful day with a full view of the park. It was amazing, the best view in the park so far, and most thru-hikers will never see it since they won't veer off the white path. But that's a whole other issue. Anyway, I had a whole other scramble down the mountain until the trail rejoined the AT and I was once again headed north on the beaten path.

From there it was quite an easy walk to Big Meadows campground, a virtual campus for car camping, with hundreds of campsites, picnic areas, overlooks, cabins, but most importantly a large restaurant and a tap room downstairs. LeesyBug and I got here around 4:30 and we quickly bellied up to the bar and put back a few Yuenglings. The restaurant did not open until 5:30 and we needed the calories.

Soon enough we were on to dinner upstairs where we are chicken and turkey all the while looking out the window at the Shenandoah Valley. Dinner was good and filling, though overpriced which was not a surprise given the location. After finishing dinner with a slice of apple pie, we explored the campground a bit in search of a stealth camping site, somewhere we could set up our tents for free and not get caught, and preferably near the bar. No good spots were found, but we did find White Pack and Bag o' Bones (my new name for Bone Pile). They are camping out tonight with Hooch and Kronk, but a few dollars were required for that privilege as the tentsite was apparently 18 big ones.

I declined and returned to the taproom with LeesyBug and MoJo, where I am now on a first name basis with the bartender, Joe. Around 9 or so this evening, some dude Steve shows up on the small stage as the "entertainment" for the night. Well, we laughed at him if that counts, otherwise it was a real stretch calling this guy entertainment. Steve is a musician in the loosest sense of the word. He had an electric-acoustic guitar, a mixer and an electric wind instrument, which I quickly dubbed the Synth-a-Suck.

Needless to say, Steve was terrible, but not just in that "oh boy this guy is terrible" kind of way. Actually, Steve's voice and his guitar playing abilities were not the problem. It was more of his choice of music, his artificial background music that was pumped out of the K-Mart mixer and, of course, the Synth-a-Suck. The low point was when we went on for over 10 minutes trying to get everyone to sing along with Woody Guthrie's "This Land is My Land". Strangely, not everyone in the bar was as appalled with Steve, and one guy even jumped up so that he could film his wife singing along. Boy, won't that be a great video to show the guys back in New York about their big trip into the wilderness. At this point I turned towards my companions, raised my beer and proclaimed a toast about how good it will to be getting back to the trail and to hiking tomorrow. Then we pounded the beers and walked by Steve's curiously empty tip jar.

Well, by this time it was after 11 and we still had nowhere to sleep. So we started wandering the campground looking for an open spot to set up our tents, hopefully out of view. Failing that, we were going to try to invite ourselves to someone else's campsite, basically anyone with a fire still burning, but we never found someone who was still up that had enough room left. Instead, we settled on this small patch of grass near the water fountain and on the pathway to the bathroom. We will need to wake up first thing in the morning and take down our tents before we get spotted. Here is to another successful stealth camping mission.

-Chomp

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