May 31st: 500 miles completed!

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500 miles!!!!! We have just finished our 500th mile today. We walked off the
next-to-last map of VA and are now on our last map! What a great day. We made it
into Troutdale today to get our re-supply box a day ahead of plan. We are staying
at the Baptist Church Hostel. Two hot showers in two days. Does life get much
better than this? Yes we even had a banana split after supper:-)
We sat at the shelter for a while this morning talking. We got a great
compliment from a young man. He said we were the most compatible couple he has
seen on the trail yet. He said most couples will snap at each other once in a
while, but he never heard us say the slightest cross word the whole time at the
shelter.
We started walking at 8:15AM the trail was mostly at a downward slope. We
started at the Mt Rogers HQ sitting at 3,220' and for the next 12.6 miles only
one mountain was higher. It was a whopping 3,260'! We managed to click off the
first four miles in one hour thirty minutes. We had planned to only do 10.6
miles and stop at the first shelter we came to. We arrived there so early we
decided to continue on into town. As we proceeded on we met two young men going
north. As we chatted the lead guy said his truck was parked at the road and he
would give us a ride to town. They had one mile to get to the shelter and we
still had three miles to the road. We didn't think he would get back in time to
drive us. We had been at the road for only 15 minutes trying to hitch and here
comes the guy down the trail. He said he had ran the entire way just to give us
a ride.
He brought us down the mountain into town, up to the Post Office then to the
hostel. We went through our box, did dinner and now we are sitting on the front
porch chatting with a couple of NoBos.
We managed to get in 14.5 miles and were in town by 3:45PM. Tomorrow we will
take it easy and walk 10.2 miles into the "Highlands." It is an area where there
are some of the only remaining wild horses roam. We have it setup to where we
only have to walk about 10 miles a day and will get to Damascus on the 5th and
leave for graduation on the 6th.

Patrick, Deborah Mooney aka OD & CC
All Who Wander Are Not Lost

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