At this point in my Appalachian journey I was beginning to get a feel for the minimalist lifestyle that the trail encourages. I’d spent days hiking through hail and nights in self-proclaimed “mouldering” three-walked huts. I had eaten horrific concoctions of food with relish, and didn’t think twice about digging a hole when nature called. Rain was a shower, sunburn a tan. The only constants I knew were sore feet and a hunger without end.

All in all, I was growing into a backcountry hiker.

Then, just like that, I landed in Shenandoah, and quickly realized that I was no longer in the backcountry. The trail here is touch and go with Skyline Drive, the park’s main road. You’re constantly crossing and recrossing fresh paved tarmac, running into bunches of day hikers and skirting clumps of old people out for picnics. In other words the “backcountry” label is all for show.

Despite the crowds and the cars, there were positives. The trail was easy and the shelters were well-kept. There were thoughtfully-placed restrooms and the occasional campground laundromat as well. But the best was yet to come.

The Waysides. The park has a series of stores over about a 30 mile stretch, easily accessed from the AT and hiker friendly, that serve hot food and have much needed supplies like Little Debbies and those heart-attack-in-a-box prepackaged honeybuns

On the 18th, my hiker crew, the old (Cosmo) and the new (Postal Poet and Allison, a section hiker, with her dog Birdie) stopped at the first. It was part general store, restaurant, and gift shop.

I ordered chili, a burger, and a blackberry milkshake (which was highly recommended while the blackberries are in season). Wolfed it down and asked for the bill only to discover it had already been paid for by a rugged old man with a bird’s nest beard.

He joined us for a bit, got to talking, and kept talking. It was incredible really. For nearly 45 minutes he delivered a one sided, rambling stream of consciousness story that involved the trail, the discounts he received on Wayside purchases, his favorite foods (which sadly he had to abstain from now because of his diabetes), a son who wanted to be an army ranger (but lacks the stamina), experiences with the last war time draft (which he avoided due in large part to a motorcycle accident that left him with a bum ankle), his childhood, and the decorations on his parent’s adjacent headstones (a rose for his mother and a brown trout for his father). And those were only the details I managed to remember, imprinted in my memory by the blunt force trauma of the man’s relentless delivery.

Turns out PATC (Potomac AT Conservancy) members specialize not only in trail care, but giving filibusters too. I kid though. He was well-meaning, if a bit quirky.

The next day we pushed six miles to the second wayside. The idea was to make it before they stopped serving breakfast.

And we did. And the pancakes were damn good. The $2 side of blueberries I ordered was an outrage though. I expected a few handfuls at least. Got maybe eight. Twenty cents for a blueberry? Even in the mountains that’s some kind of rate.

This wayside was a bit higher tier than the other however. Where the first had a cafeteria tiled floor and plastic chairs, this had varnished wood furniture and a looming glass window with a valley view. There were no grizzled farmhands with bird’s nest beards, just well-dressed people sipping orange juice from clear glasses, the type who you’d expect to raise a glass any minute to propose a cordial toast.

We sat dead center in the middle of the room in our sweat stained clothes, forgoing the silverware to ravage gross amounts of food with our grubby fingers, and not a one of us bat an eye through it all. Hiker trash and proud of it.

The third and last day of our passage between the waysides we stopped at Elkwallow around noon. There Postal Poet became patron saint by buying us all a final round of blackberry milkshakes.

We lingered there for a long while, enjoying our drinks and leeching a last charge from some outdoor outlets by the vending machines. Our group had been together for three days now, and they’d been good days.

There was Cosmo and me, then Postal and Allison had begun to tag along. Before we knew it we’d picked up another, Hestia, the Greek goddess of hearth and home. And soon after, two newcomers to the trail, Ibu and Pak, an American couple returning from four years in Indonesia had joined the pack. All in all we made a solid trail family.   (Left to right: Hestia, Allison, and Cosmo)

The Wayside chronicles coming, as it were, to a close, we decided to see the golden era off in proper fashion. So we pooled our resources, bought some beer, hot dogs, chocolate, marshmallows and graham crackers for smores, split the load, then partied around a big blazing fire at the shelter that night.