Today we said goodbye to Shenandoah park, and continued our push towards Harper’s Ferry. We pushed hard today, going just over 23 miles total to Manassas Gap Shelter. It was another just prefect day, a bit warmer than it has been. Though we did lose a bit of elevation as we descended out of the park, which is going to make temperatures warmer than they have been anyway.
We got one last bear sighting before exiting Shenandoah, which means we saw at least one black bear every day that we were in the park. There will still be the possibly of more bear sightings as we continue north, but I feel like they’re not going to be quite as frequent as they have been. At the end of our day, as we descended down into Manassas Gap, we traded bears for bunnies as we saw quite a few rabbits hopping along the trail in the early evening.
We also got some more trail magic today, which was a nice extension of the generosity of yesterday. First we passed a box with a bunch of snacks at US Route 522. Then as we were climbing up to the Denton shelter, we came across a couple who had been visiting with a brother who’s thru-hiking. They gave us some fresh fruit and mimosas. Yes, you read that right… mimosas in the middle of the woods. After relaxing for a bit at the very excellent Denton shelter, we decided to push on for the extra 5.5 miles. When we reached Manassas Gap, we were surprised a final time with pizza and beer, as another thru-hiker was celebrating his birthday with his parents. That final magic powered us up the last 2.5 miles to the shelter.
I’ll wrap up this post by saying happy Father’s day to all the dads out there who follow us. We hope you all had a great day.
