Miles: 1019.0 | A sunny ridge walk carries us across the West Virginia border, punctuated by an off-trail gas station stop for water and junk-food fuel. With no pressure to push on, we set up camp early, stumble into full LTE service, and break our no-Netflix rule to watch Grizzly Man from our tents. The night ends quietly—save for distant voices in the woods and another deer encounter—an oddly peaceful close to our first day in a new state.
We crossed the West Virginia border in the morning.
There were not water sources listed during the miles we were planning on doing that day so we decided to stop at a gas station listed that was 0.3 miles off trail. The terrain for the day was a lovely ridge walk with an occasional mid patch. When we arrived at the gas station I got water, macaroni salad, chips, and a candy bar. It was sunny most of the day.
At a road crossing we saw Babaganoush (the second one I met) who was going into DC to see his friends. We made it to a campsite not long after that and set up early. I climbed into Miles’ tent and we realized I had a full 4 bars of LTE service on my phone. We’d been talking for weeks about this movie: Grizzly Man. Miles had watched it before he left and said I just had to see it. We had plenty of time and good service so we decided, against our usual no Netflix policy to watch it. It wasn’t on Netflix so we rented it on Amazon for a dollar.
We watched Grizzly Man with gripping attention while we ate the rest of our gas station snacks. We went to bed early in our separate tents after that.
Sometime around 10pm some other hikers noisily set up camp just out of sight of ours. I heard their laughter from afar on a creepy echo and it kind of freaked me out. I heard loud, branch breaking footsteps shortly after the laughter and got nervous. I unzipped my tent and shined my headlamp out into the woods around us. Honestly I was mostly afraid I’d see another person, for some reason. All I saw was a nice Doe staring back at me. Deer are always finding me out here! I told her she was a pretty lady and got back into my tent, ready to sleep.