2021-March: Our Appalachia Trail Adventure

 Mar. 29, 2021:

After finally getting packed up, we drove about 1.5 hours through the sunshine from Nathan’s house in Forest, VA to the parking lot at McAfee Knob trailhead.

The beginning of the trail is steep and feels like you’re walking straight up. When you reach the first level spot, you are at a split where the actual AT goes on a lower level, and walking straight ahead you are on a dirt service road. We took the dirt service road on the way to McAfee Knob and the actual AT on the way back the next day.  The bugs (little black flies) were already bad on the service road, disturbing our lunch break and hiking. Ruth Ann put on her bug hat. After about .5 mile of the service road, there was a chain across the road and a sign saying “2.5 miles to McAfee Knob” and pointing to the path going up the mountain to the left.

We had been seeing many hikers pass us on their hike back down. We were hiking in the late afternoon. Clearly others had started their day hike to McAfee Knob early in the morning. It is a 4 mile hike from the trailhead to the Knob. 8 miles round trip. After awhile John wore his bug hat and poor Naomi kept fighting off the black flies with waves of her hands. (We offered to share our 2 hats, but she declined.) Many hikers commented on our hats and said they’d be investing in one for themselves very soon!

The trail up to McAfee Knob had a lot of stones, roots, small streams, beautiful stands of trees, leaves, moss, lichen – all the beauty we imagined a trail would have. As one nears McAfee Knob, which is very near the peak of the mountain, the path gets more stoney and a little flatter. Finally, you can see there is an openness beyond some bushes, and you push through and there you are, on a majestic stone ledge, overlooking miles and miles of the Appalachian mountains. A rich, valley runs between two long ridges of peaks. Off to the right one can see a town with an airport (probably Roanoke).

There were at least a dozen other hiker-tourists there on McAfee Knob while we were there. Everyone was taking their photos on the edge of the impressive overhang rock. After almost an hour of enjoying the scenery, the fresh breeze and having our backpacks off our backs, we hoisted up our packs and found our way to the path that continued on the AT. We were not returning to the parking lot that evening like most of the others! We didn’t pass anyone on this part of the trail. It was narrow, windy, very stoney with many roots and a steep downward path. (I knew we had our work cut-out for us the next morning when we’d be returning.) It was also not long, less than an hour, before we reached the first fire-circle of the Campbell Campground. We kept going until we saw the shelter, the bear box and the sign, nailed to a tree, pointing the direction to the water source.

At this part of Campbell Campground, Naomi was happy to see two tents. It meant we would not be alone – there would be other fresh meat available to ravenous wild animals during the night! She would get more and more excited as more campers showed up. In the end 22 people, including us, camped at the Campbell Campground/Pig Farm campground that night. It was so idyllic – a nice shelter, a fire-pit, a bear-box, a privy and a water source.  Chef John expertly prepared our Pad Thai freeze-dried dinner with the jet-boil stove. We also had grapes and clementines that John had carried in.

3 – John, Ruth Ann and Naomi

2 – brothers from Canton, Michigan

4 – family camping higher up

1 – guy sleeping in a hammock

3 – women who showed up just before dark

8 – family that showed up after dark and slept in the shelter

1 – hiker who put up a shelter-type tent down from the bear-box and left early

After dinner John practiced his bear-bag hanging skills, and eventually got a rope slung over a high branch and clipped the bear-bag to it temporarily. (With the bearbox, we were all set.) We refilled water bottles at the stream about 200 yards away via a path across the clearing cut for the mega-power lines. We sanitized the stream water with the kit it seemed many of our co-campers used also.

We enjoyed chatting with the two brothers from Michigan. They are the ones who inspired us to get a fire going in the firepit. It was just after dark when we were sitting at the picnic table with them that we heard a lot of footsteps and soft chatter and one of the guys from MI said, “sounds like a scout troop coming.” Instead, it was a family with 6 kids from Maryland! They were so impressive. Kids ranged in age from 7 to about 15. They asked excitedly if they could sleep in the shelter, we said “yes, by all means.” They quickly rolled out their camping pads. They were happy to see a privy and a bearbox. They had eaten their supper on the McAfee Knob overlook. Then they had hiked down that steep, windy path in the dark, and now all they had to do was go to sleep.

Mar. 30, 2021:

Naomi slept in her tent and John & I in ours, not too far away. It was a pretty cold night – down to about 35 degrees F. In the morning, I asked Naomi how she slept. She said, “much better than Saturday night at the Campbell Campground in Ohio.” That night there had been thunderstorms and Naomi says she didn’t sleep at all due to animals noises she was hearing, when she wasn’t kept awake by crashing winds, thunder and lightning. It had given her much peace to know that there was an entire family sleeping in the shelter very near to her – much easier target than her in her tent!

The next morning we got up, cooked our oatmeal breakfast and coffee, while the heartier hikers around us (the 8 person family and the Michiganders) quickly ate a bar for breakfast, then packed up and hit the trail. We were on the trail before 9am, and it was chilly, (45 degrees F), but clearly warming up. I started out on the steep uphill path. John and Naomi quickly passed me. We re-united at the McAfee Knob. There weren’t as many hikers there at 10am, so we enjoyed the spectacular views and refreshing breezes for an hour.

The hike back down was somewhat strenuous, but not nearly as bad as the hike up to the Knob. The scenery along the way was beautiful – everything we had imagined. Tall stands of deciduous trees, merging into tall stands of pines and evergreens, boulders, little caves, and as we got lower, flowers and more flowers. The trees got greener and lower down many trees had flowers and buds giving the forest a glorious veil of spring color. We got back to the parking lot at about 1:30pm. We got back to Forest and Nathan & Leslie’s house around 3pm.