I was awoken in the middle of the night by howling sounds of what I thought were wild dogs. They were about 50 yards away from our camp site. We were tenting fairly close to one another so immediately following the howling I could hear others rustling around on their air mattresses. I softly said out loud, “what the hell was that!?” Mulligan, the closest to me replied, “coyotes.” Wow, that’s cool, I thought. I probably wouldn’t have thought so had they continued all night or got closer to us….neither of which happened, thank goodness.

Later that morning I woke up to the sounds of cars zipping by on the highway just beyond the parking lot that separated our campsite from the road. I ate a quick breakfast and heard car doors slamming as people walked towards our campsite. I could hear some of the young ladies from our camp outside as the strangers approached. So I stuck my head out to make sure everything was okay. A day hiker asked if we wanted any Rock Star energy drinks. I blurted out “I do!” Chickadee grabbed one for me. I thanked him for the trail magic, and her for grabbing it for me.

The parking lot had a trash can and a real bathroom. These might seem like silly novelties to most, but to thru hikers, both are amazing to have access to. We emptied our trash from food we’d eaten and had been carrying in the woods, and all took turns in the real bathroom.

A few of the young ladies and Mulligan were still getting up and ready when I headed out. There was a fairly steep climb up a grassy meadow. I stopped and took photos on my way up. I kept climbing up, up, up. I started seeing horse droppings and got excited. Who gets excited over horse droppings? I knew the wild ponies were close.

I took a blue blazed side trail to go see Mount Rogers. I heard it was a waste of time as it provided no views, but I’ve heard that about a lot of places and went anyway and was glad I did. I thought the young ladies were headed there to check it out too.

I hiked through a thick evergreen forest. It was dark and cool as the evergreens provided a canopy shading the area from the sun. Moss covered the ground everywhere. It was beautiful. The trail abruptly ended in the middle of the forest. There were faint trails that wandered off in all directions, but none were prominent enough to follow. So I decided to take a break, sitting on a large rock, and wait for the others to get there. I figured 4 heads were better than 1. I waited for about 20 – 30 min. Nothing. Hmmm. They weren’t too far behind me I thought, so I headed back.

I reached the AT and headed north again. I passed someone heading south and asked him if he’d seen 2-3 young ladies hiking together. He said he passed some about 15-20 minutes ago heading north. I continued on. I entered the Grayson Highlands. This place was gorgeous. The landscape, trees, mountains, rock formations, it was very different from anything we’d seen so far. I caught up with Up and Over, who I met before. We hiked for awhile together. We passed the 500 mile marker and took some pics. We continued on for awhile until I found Brooklyn, Lavender and Mulligan laying on the ground taking a break. Up and Over continued on while I stopped for a break too.

Mulligan was unusually exhausted. We all hung out for a bit before hitting the trail again. We hiked over a few huge bounders keeping our eyes peeled for some of the wild ponies to take photos of. In the distance we spotted a few. Not sure if we’d see any others Mulligan and I took off after the ponies like little kids who just saw Mickey Mouse at Disney for the first time. We looked back and Brooklyn and Lavender weren’t behind us. They said they were sure they’d see others up the trail.

Mulligan and I descended down on the ponies armed with our cameras in hand. Snapping pics and taking video as we got closer and closer. They were beautiful. Mulligan took out the orange peels and fed one of the ponies. Several other ponies came over to him. He went down on a knee and they were licking him everywhere. They like the salt from the sweat on our skin.

Mulligan was surrounded by several of the ponies still down on a knee. Within a split second things could have gone really wrong. One of the wild ponies bucked it’s hind legs vigorously straight up in the air barely missing Mulligan as he jumped up off his knee. It was a mother pony with its baby close by and a male pony approaching from behind. So the mother was trying to kick the male and push it away.

We headed uphill back to the trail. The ponies followed us for awhile before stopping. We continued on hiking over more small mountains. We made it through Fat Man Squeeze. A rock opening that’s small and tight to get through. We came up over another hill and saw more ponies! There were so many and they were everywhere. We snapped some more photos as we hiked on until we found Lavender and Brooklyn sitting on a bench. We stopped and chatted with them for a bit before continuing on.

Mulligan and I were both in need of a resupply of food, and with a nasty storm coming in overnight, we decided to try to get a room at a nearby inn that was attached to a gas station and grill. We called, they had a room with one queen size bed. I told Mulligan I’d sleep on the floor on my air mattress. No biggie.

The owner picked us up and we arrived at the Highlands general store and inn. The new owner remodeled the place so it was practically new. The store was great. It not only had everything we needed for resupply, it also had a cafe and nice menu of items we could have cooked for us. Hamburgers, hotdogs, cheese sticks, onion rings, soup, etc. We ordered and ate dinner there. We both really enjoyed our meals.

A young lady showed us to our room then to where the laundry room was. There was a shower in the laundry room as well. I asked “is this where we shower?” The girl laughed and said “no silly, you have your own shower in your room.” I laughed back and told her we’ve stayed in some pretty rough places and we were lucky to have a hose out back to spray ourselves off with. Kidding of course. It hasn’t been that bad 😉

This place looked like it might have been a little mini apt complex or something at one point. We showered, in our own shower, did laundry, then relaxed in our room. They provided a nice big rollaway bed for me too so I didn’t have to sleep on the floor. I caught up on work items, we watched a little tv, then fell fast asleep.

[ Mulligan’s video of this day’s events. About 9 min in is where we see the ponies https://youtu.be/VZQ5cKYgxwU ]

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