After Trail Days: Daleville zero, trail maj and McAffee Knob

I had a Trail Days hangover.

Instead of resuming my hike immediately after Trail Days at mile 693 from Springer, I got a ride from Zipper [AT '09] 20+ further up to Daleville, where the AT encounters a bustling Interstate junction. I split a room at the Howard Johnson, next to the trail, with a hiker named Shorts. Sipping beer and watching tv in the A/C after two days of sipping beer in Tent City and Damascus relaxed me miraculously. And then I zeroed the next day because I really needed to catch up on this blog. It was raining buckets all day anyway.

But I was in the process of laying my clothes out to dry on the sidewalk outside my room when I glanced into the adjacent room and saw some dude. "Wait a sec," I thought, recognizing the Fila hat that Tintin had bought in Abingdon before a group of us went to the movies. It was Tintin, Fredo and Tornado, slowly getting ready to hike out. They'd abstained from Trail Days in vain, it appeared.

On the day I was due to hike I was buying coffee and a Danish at the coffee shop next to the outfitter in Daleville, in the plaza down the road from the HoJo.

"Excuse me," a young man who looked likely to be a Virginia Tech student [Blacksburg is very close] said. "Can I pay for you, sir?"

I was momentarily speechless. The barista meanwhile swiped my card. "Can you cancel that?" he said. We shook hands, exchanged names. He asked how the Trail was. I left feeling blessed.

I got a ride back down to where I was on the trail from Creepy, who was returning a rental car to Pearisburg.

It was May 18, a rainy day on which to hit McAffee Knob, one of the most iconic landmarks on the AT. Hikers put almost as much effort into McAffee Knob photos as Katahdin ones.

Being on my own again, I set my camera to timer and hurried over there. Here's what I came up with:

[Me at McAffee Knob, May 18.]

I hiked on to Tinker Cliffs, another renowned overlook, and experienced another fogbank fail. I sang loud as I finished my 16 mile day into Lamberts Meadow Shelter, where I stayed with three people - a woman from Israel named "Kutsa" and two older section hikers - I didn't know. Someone had left cans of soda in the creek for trail magic.