4/28 Longest yet

29 miles today, 672 Mile N
Niday Shelter

Today I got a very early start from Captains place. I was out by 7:15 with the goal of catching up with Bowser before he left the shelter 3 miles ahead. My morning involved crossing the river again by Captain's house. He told me a much easier crossing point and minus cold feet it was an easy crossing. Then a rough stretch of trail to the washed out bridge where I crossed another river. Then up the mountain. I got to the shelter about 8:30 but Bowser was already gone. I found out from south bound hikers that I was only 15 minutes behind. As the day progressed I fell further and further behind. I could tell it was a weekend because the trail had day hikers out, I met at least half a dozen or so.
The morning temps were very cool and the wind chilly and it remained so until after lunch but finally it warmed up in the afternoon. At 4 o'clock I finally caught up with Bowser who had napped at a shelter. He decided to make a short day and I decided I was going to go long so we only spent a hour together in total with Greybeard who also was staying for the night. Greybeard and I hit off great as we both work in IT and shared many similar backgrounds. We talked about obscure mainframe technologies and the practice of tech support probably boring the heck out of Bowser.
In the end I still had 12 miles to go and so at 5P.M. I set of with. I had to descend, climb, and descend more ridgelines in the next 12 miles and I wanted to finished the bulk of it before dark. The initial decent took me through a mile or two of rolling idyllic pastures where I saw cows, horses, and a pony grazing. Something I have also noticed is that song birds really like the edge of meadows. Every meadow I have been to in the last two weeks seems to be rimmed with bird song. It is very nice.
Going through this meadow/valley I couldn't help but noticed that the houses seemed to be often in states of decay. I saw a house that I had very recently burnt down so the half of it was simply missing. Another old house had decayed to simply a chimmy stack. Yet another log cabin was in the woods with a collapsed roof and so on.
The climb out of the valley and took only an hour or so. On the top the ridge was packed with life. There were birds, about the size of baseballs with orange bellies everywhere trying their best to get lucky for the night. I came across five deer grazing along the trail and a very started squirrel who I had managed to sneak up upon.
I got to the end of my ridge walk which seemed to alternate from easy to tough. Some parts were rock free as in someone had actually picked up all the rocks and put them in piles along the ridge!? Other parts where walking on hard slanted limestone. Fortunately I got the final decent just as it was getting dark. It still took me an hour and half to get down to the shelter since the slope down was rather steep and treacherous. My altimeter was out of calibration and I didn't expect to see the shelter for another 200 feet so when I found the shelter it was more out of luck then anything else. I knew it was near a creek and I thought I heard one and looked around. To my right was the shelter. I didn't initially see it though. I did notice that there was a horizontal line in the woods and to my surprise when I got closed I saw this was the edge of the roof. Luck find for me.
In the end I was hiking for 14 hours and did 29 miles, my longest day yet. Road Dog was there and he didn't mind my making a ruckus as I set up camp. He turned out to be a very nice companion for the night. He is an AT sectioner heading south.