Appalachian Trail (day 32) - Audie Murphy Monument to Tinker Cliffs / mile 721

Day full of beautiful hiking sites.

First on the menu was a climb to the Dragons Tooth, nothing out of ordinary but I managed to spot here the second black bear I've seen on AT so far, this one looked quite sickly, he was really thin and his fur was all scruffy, I must have woke him up. I've felt sorry for the poor fellow.

Once at the top, the descent commenced and it was definitely the most technical rock scrambling and climbing I've done so far on the Appalachian Trail. It was challenging to find a right route down nearly vertical slabs of rock, on the other hand it was fun and very satisfying! I really enjoyed that section, apparently there's some more of these to come in Maine.

At about 11 AM I took a detour to a gas station in a village of Catawba, which also served as a grocery. It was only half a mile off trail. I bought a coffee, slice of pizza, pork scratchings (which were delicious!) and few snacks to keep me going (why are the snacks always gone!?)

Injected with all those precious calories I've pushed on to what I've later realized was the most photographed view on the entire Appalachian Trail, McAfee Knob.

McAfee Knob is considered one of the finest views in Virginia, it has an overhanging rock making for a dramatic picture pose. The rock was great and the view was breathtaking! Definitely the top three on the AT so far. I've taken the money shot with a help of another hiker, I was quite lucky as usually this place was crawling with day hikers but since it was late afternoon everyone has gone down already.

I've decided to push few more miles to the next shelter, dispersed camping was banned in this area as the bear population was big and storing food in bear boxes was mandatory, some hikers even got fined for not following this rule.

Trail was running along the ledges which also revealed the same spectacular views of the long valley with rows of Appalachian mountains as the backdrop.

Once in campsite I've quickly set up the tent, cooked ramen bomb and placed all my food and cooking gear in the bear box.

As a side note I've installed a bird recognition app called Merlin and I have been recording bird sounds for few days now. It's really fun, tonight I've heard Eastern Whip-poor-will for the first time, described in the app as: "Cryptic night bird, more often heard than seen. Listen for namesake song "whip-poor-WILL" repeated endlessly." App was not wrong, it really did repeat it for a loong time. 

I've woke up three hours later and Whip-poor-will was still going!