We did our first hike of the year this past weekend. Nicole, Tim, and Stavros, and I headed over to Manassas, VA Friday night and crashed at a hotel. In the morning, we had breakfast, and beat feet about 40 mins to the trailhead in north Shenandoah National Park. The weather was quite nice. We did the Mount Marshall overnight loop. It was Nicole’s first overnight backpack and she handled it all quite well. We are now buying her some new gear and I am excited to have finally met someone that shares many of the same interests.

It was cold on the mountain Sunday morning and we weren’t long having breakfast and breaking down camp. We filtered some water and headed towards the AT. It took us about 5 hours or so to make it back to the car. We when down the mountain and head straight for Pave Mint, a smokehouse/craft brew restaurant in Front Royal. After a late lunch we were back on the road heading home from another wonderful hiking weekend.