June 10, 2025

Wow what a terrible night of sleep, not because of some dramatic event, just a constant series of turning from one side to the other. Broke camp in a decent amount of time for our first round. Gotta get the routines back to their well-oiled state, but that will come in time (and error). Had breakfast without the conspiracy theorist because he had already left by the time we made it over to the shelter.

Lucked out with another very dry day of hiking, though we were not dry because it was also very warm. The recent rains left enough mud for us to spot many (many) bear paw prints along the way, but we never ran into any of the owners.

We stopped for a bathroom and water break at Gathland state park and sweated our way back into the woods. My pack felt very heavy by lunch time and my feet were a little sore, but overall it was a fine day of hiking for our first back to back hikes with our packs. We found more mushroom friends and mountain laurel! I thought for sure that we would miss the laurel season, but I was wrong (so wrong, apparently).

Arrived at Rocky run with trepidation because the reviews in far out (formerly known as gut hook) said that it was sometimes overrun with locals and their dogs. No one appeared to be there yet. We dropped our packs by the very large and very new shelter and went down the blue blaze to collect water before setting up our tent (in case the scene down by the older shelter at the creek was sketchy and we needed to just move on). A person darted across the trail way down the hill and somehow disappeared, which creeped me out, but we saw him again the next morning. Turns out he was just camping way behind the shelter and wanted to keep to himself.

We found the water, which was a very happy little stream near the older shelter. At least, it was happy until a fawn showed up in the creek, made a very strange honk/alarm sound, and then ran away. I thought I saw a dark patch on its fur and immediately worried that it was injured, but it disappeared. My worst case scenario machine went into overdrive for the rest of the night. Was the fawn okay? where was the mother? what happens to abandoned fawns? I didn’t have enough service to soothe (or alarm) myself with google, so we had to just move on. We took our water back up to the shelter and set up our tent.

Several other hikers appeared, none of whom seemed sketchy, so my alarm signals for humans went down a few notches. Unfortunately, our company turned out to be of the mansplaining highly nationalist, highly militaristic variety. We ate dinner at the shelter, but did not linger to hear more about the principles of getting other countries to do things we want them to do. Let’s not even talk about how maybe we should stop trying to get other countries to bend to our will. No, no. While we were eating, the fawn bedded down in a pile of leaves under the shelter, which seemed like a good and a bad instinct. It was under cover and theoretically safe, but so close to humans. I couldn’t get that little creature off my mind, and I’m still worried about it, but I will never get to know what happens to it. Apologies for passing that worry along, but it was a big part of my evening experience.

We brushed our teeth, dropped our bear cans in the metal food box near the shelter (yay for food storage!) and retreated to the comfort and silence of our tent area to enjoy a few rounds of golf before hiker midnight (aka 8pm).

A mournful sound of some sort kept happening, and I went looking to see if I could figure out what it was, to no avail. Turns out it was an yellow-billed cuckoo call, which I found out the next day after I downloaded the Merlin bird app. We were proud of ourselves for hiking a little farther, and we were tired and sticky humans as we settled into the tent for the night. I tried (and failed) to forget about the fawn because as soon as night fell, there were a lot of strange calling sounds. No sense in trying to figure out what they were because I would just disrupt the situation with my presence, so I stayed in the tent waiting for something terrible to happen. So restful. Good luck out there, little buddy. Hope it worked out.

Mile 1033.0 – 1042.1 (9.1) Rocky Run shelter

Total miles: 16.1

creature feature: many birds, squeaking chipmunks, scarlet tanager calls high in the canopy, bear footprints, and the confused little fawn.