May 8

Party floor

We left the cabin this morning.  I had a visitor in the night.  A big wet dog.  We were served up a great breakfast of huge pancakes, coffee, and omlettes made from fresh eggs right from the hen house.  They even gave us a ride back up to the mountain.  All this hospitality for just some gas money!  Awesome.  Well we started hiking up toward Mt. Rogers, the highest peak in Virginia at 5729 feet.  It was cold and the sky was grey.  We got to the side trail that led 0.5 miles to the summit of Rogers.  I had wanted to go there, even though there's no view, just to be at the highest point in Virginia.  But right then, a cold rain had started falling again, and the shelter at Thomas Knob was only half a mile away.  Skip the side trail.  We got up to the shelter and surprisingly it wasn't full, yet.  We claimed our spots up on the second floor of the shelter, and spent a lazy afternoon around the shelter after 4.9 miles of hiking.  A wild pony came up to the shelter.  It would come right up to you and lick your legs.  I guess they have a taste for salty hiker sweat.  A lot of us took turns getting a pony bath.  The shelter quickly filled up with cold, wet hikers.  Tinkerbell showed up too!  She had hiked to the shelter to catch up with us, since she didn't have a tent anymore.  She was picking up a new one in 4 days, and was hoping the weather would be okay, or that she could find shelter space.  We made room up on the second floor.  With a few other hikers from the 'younger' crowd, we had 9 people upstairs, and dubbed it "the party floor".  We stayed up late talking, telling jokes, and laughing hysterically, so happy to be out of the cold, miserable weather.

The wild ponies in the Grayson Highlands are not shy.