VA Section Day 6. A Sunrise at the Tooth, a Trail Legend to end the day

Hey good morning. Where are we? Tooth. In our Crocs. So we spent the night at the base of the Tooth. There's an amazing two-person campsite kind of tucked down the hill just a touch behind all the rocks. So not right at the base of the Tooth but just around the corner. There's a fire pit. It was a great find. And we set our alarms to get up a little early but walked two minutes over to this. So now we're tucked in at the base of the Tooth in the rocks to keep the wind down. That's beautiful. Is anyone else waking up to something like this? Tell me. So, so far walking on the northbound side from Dragon's Tooth, which is all new trail to us, it is much easier on the rock scramble. Walking along the ridgeline so far for the first mile or so and lots of really pretty places with overlooks. So we'll see how long it lasts and we are planning on 15 miles today with hopefully an exciting surprise at the end. Somebody who's well known to the trail that I've been in contact with and we're just hoping that things work out. So we'll see how it goes. Just another overlook in our first hour as we descend from Dragon's Tooth. Not a bad way to spend a morning. Hard to believe that Marco Island is under a full-out hurricane as we speak. One more beautiful view before we get to the shelter. Another mile for breakfast and water much needed. If you stay at Dragon's Tooth you better bring a little extra water because it's four miles or 0.2 water and shelter. So the water source at the pickle something pickle bell, I don't know, shelter is uh is excellent. Looks like I could practically drink right out of that but it's a long way down and the shelter was 0.3 off trail but we didn't have a choice. So I'm a fan of uh reading the journals at the at the shelters and writing in them and usually they're kind of just a plain notebook so this is cute. Somebody's got a sense of humor here at Pickle Branch. Apparently we picked up another hiking partner. This guy has been following us since we left the shelter and a guy rolled in and we were like hey you know your dog and he's like oh it's not my dog and he said it belongs to hunters in the area. The dog has three collars on him so he's got some kind of tracking beacon on him and he seems very passive and very reasonably friendly and hungry and every time we stop he stops a couple feet behind us and like looks away as if you can't see me. I'm not here. So that's the only reason I'm not completely scared and freaked out. So we came out of the woods and uh crossed the creek to the road and uh I actually met a greybeard's owner. Greybeard turned out to be Rango and a couple hunters and their dogs and we had a really nice conversation with them for 10 minutes or so and learned a little bit about what they do. They're hunting bear and it keeps the population down. Here's the 1500 for Sobo's. Congratulations Sobo's. Only another 700 to go. So this is the monument we've been hiking towards and it's pretty amazing. Audie Murphy, he was the most decorated veteran of World War II with 24 decorations including the Medal of Honor and three Purple Hearts and the reason it's here in Virginia is he died in a plane crash somewhere near this site in 1971. Looks like he was in his 50s at the time but people have left all kinds of mementos and this bracelet was from a guy that served in Afghanistan and then lots of dog tags and then a note to Audie. This is incredible. All right so this is a creek that's supposed to be a great water source. Not on that side and interesting um construction is that the word I'm looking for? Maybe the guy who constructed it was drunk so it was level to him. Yeah right and there's a little bit of water over there but it's standing still so we're going to pass on the water. We're going to hope our guest in point two, I guess we're his guest, has water for us and if not we'll be able to get it at the shelter. So excited to see the surprise. Can you see it? Can you see it? The most famous van on the Appalachian Trail. I don't know what's more important this or Katahdin in terms of being a hiker. All right we are sitting on the side of the road with fresh ground. Here comes a car literally. Yep right on the side of the road. Yeah tell us about yourself and your production. So this is a leaf frog cafe. I randomly set up at places like this about two and a half months with the Sobo's. So y'all happen to be a section hike and you contacted me and I just happened to be headed this way. I thought well I'll stop by and catch y'all which is good because we got two Sobo's with y'all. What a nice guy. We got because I knew you were in the area. KT just came by earlier but yeah I just set up. I'm a non-profit and it's all you can eat for free and I'm a 501c3. I sleep in the van and run a kitchen you know and I think I got a pretty good kitchen. You can cook about what you want. How's the food guys? Delicious. We just had some amazing burritos. Soda. I'm having coffee right now even though it's five o'clock at night. Salad. There's a whole thing of fruit and fresh water. I don't have to drink out of a gross stream. We got snacks. It's a lot of fun for you isn't it? I like cooking and I like being in the woods and I like talking. He's three for three. I told my mom the other day I said I'm still when I was a little kid I used to go hang out in the woods. I said mom I'm still in the woods. And you're still talking too ain't you? I'm making friends in the woods. Happy audience y'all are. Yes thank you very much for what you do not only for us tonight but what you do for the hiking community. Much appreciated. It soothes me too. It's therapeutic for me. Awesome. All right. We made it up to the ECD which we needed to keep going because I needed service to know my parents were okay. So they are the Power High Winds. Now we gotta find two sites that supposedly are up here somewhere.