Day 98,99: Waynesboro, Humpback Mountain

After our last day in the shenendoahs, delta and I headed into Waynesboro VA. Deltas great uncle Ron and his wife Celia live in Waynesboro and generously allowed us to stay with them. They picked us up at the trailhead and drove us back to their house. Ron used to fly planes a lot and as such they live in this awesome neighborhood with a runway in the middle and airplane hangars at each house. It was so cool—I had no idea neighborhoods like that even existed. Ron and Celia made us feel so at home and took such good care of us. We got to take nice hot showers and then we had a nice classy snack of cheese and crackers and grapes and beers. They were also so hilarious and made me laugh throughout my visit. After we got settled, the four of us drove to Ming’s Garden, a Chinese buffet we’d been hearing about from northbound hikers since day three on the trail. I’d been looking forward to this restaurant for over a thousand miles so I was excited but a bit nervous it wouldn’t live up to my high expectations. It turned out my fears were unfounded: the food was in fact amazingly delicious and I think Delta and I somewhat grossed out but also oddly impressed Ron and Celia with the amount we could eat. I slept so well with a full tummy and in a real bed. It was so tough to leave the next day, especially when Celia kept asking “what can we do to make you stay another day?” But we have many miles to Georgia and its not getting any warmer so off we went! After getting errands done in the morning, we hiked a pretty easy twelve miles up to the top of Humpback mountain. We got there as it was getting dark, but just in time to see an amazing sunset. We camped right by a cliff with a great view of it, me in my tent and delta cowboy camping under the stars. It was really windy and chilly overnight.