July 5, 2014 We got up about 5:30 and fixed our morning coffee and had breakfast. I had had a miserable night trying to sleep. Every time I would start to doze off I’d move and throw another cramp in either my foot, calf or my thigh. Not an easy night in the shelter! I probably got 3-4 hrs of sleep but none of it was a solid sleep leading to a restful night. This is what always happens to me the first two days on the trail. It is probably caused by dehydration and being unaccustomed to this much physical exercise. I made a quick dash to the privy and then came back and packed my gear. By 6:30 Johnny B and I were heading down the trail and we stopped at the spring to fill up our camels. By 7:00 we were back on the trail. Today’s plan was to make it to Basore’s Ridge Shelter about 14 miles north of our current location. The trail this morning was miserable. It was well blazed but extremely rocky. It reminded me more of the Pennsylvania rocks than hiking in West Virginia. I do have to say that the trail was well blazed. We followed an ATV/ORV road for a long time and along some spots we actually came off the trail and walked along the road carefully watching for the blazes on our right. With sore feet the trail through the rocks was very difficult and we were unable to really get into a good hiking pace. By 12:30 we had only made about 6 miles to the Barclay Run Shelter. Barclay Run Shelter is another beautiful new shelter along the Tuscarora Trail. It is located near the trail leading to the Gore connector trail. We got there and took off our packs and had lunch. After lunch Johnny B and I discussed the rest of the day. We were going to pack out about 1:00 p.m. and we still had another 8 miles, mostly road walking, to do to get to the next shelter. It was hot and we finally decided to call our wives and see if they had a problem if we extended our trip for one extra day. Fortunately, we had good cell phone service and when we told our wives what was going and they had no problem with spending another night at the cabin and doing some more shopping. (They shop, we hike!) We reorganized our food supply and decided that if we split one breakfast that we had enough food to make it for an extra day. We hoped that Siler’s Store might be open in Siler but we had enough so that we didn’t have to count on a resupply stop. We had heard that Siler’s Store has very unreliable hours of operation. I was still having cramping issues and my feet were slightly swollen so we decided to stay put for the evening. The water source for the shelter was tolerable. We found two small springs that were protected by stone walls and we were able to filter plenty of water for the evening and for the next morning, After getting water, eating lunch and taking a long nap we got up and made a jug of trail wine and then moved down to the picnic table to play a hand of cards and savor our trail wine. After our card game we came back to the shelter and fixed supper. Barclay Run Shelter is another of the new shelters along the Tuscarora Trail. It is a beautiful shelter that is well constructed. It has a covered picnic table for cooking. We didn’t spot a bear pole for hanging our food. But, the site did have plenty of permanent tent sites with eye-bolt tie-downs. This is another well designed and laid out shelter site and the guys who built the place should be proud of their accomplishments. The privy even had toilet paper and it has a comical name attached to it “WILLY MAK IT” We settled in for the night and were serenaded throughout the night by the whippoorwills. I slept soundly and got up about 5:30 am after a good night’s sleep. Today’s mileage 6.2 miles
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 02:37:25 +0000
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