The morning of May 25th dawned with heavy rain, high winds and lightning, where I watched with wonder from my hotel in Asheville, North Carolina. A pretty nasty system of storms was blowing over the Appalachians and barrelling down into North Carolina. This much was obvious; the Weather Channel simply confirmed my concerns. Whereas I'd intended to spend much of this day in the North Carolina mountains, it became apparent Ma Nature was not going to make it easy to do so. As a result, I decided to alter my trip's plans and head on up to Virginia a little faster than planned, and come back to North Carolina a day or two later.

I arrived at the Virginia highpoint, Mt. Rogers, around noon in gloomy foggy weather but certainly much nicer than what was happening in Asheville. I got dressed and got my day pack in order, and started in. This highpoint actually requires some hiking: 8.5 miles of it, round trip along the Appalachian Trail. It was cool, very windy, and very foggy, but I pressed on. I met numerous hikers, many of them attempting to hike the entire trail, which is 2,200 miles long and runs from northern Georgia to Katahdin in Maine. I met up with a girl named Paige and her two dogs, Isaac the terrier and Jack the husky. She was just out for a three-day loop hike, and we hiked together for about a mile or so. Her dogs would run ahead, then run behind us, then come back. There are also horses in this area, too. They've been tamed by all the hikers who pet them and feed them over the years. They're not the big racehorse types. Paige's dogs had a merry time barking at the horses. We finally came upon a shelter and met up with other hikers, about 3 miles in from where I'd started. Mount Rogers was in view across the way, about a half-mile further.

From here, I left the group and hiked on to the summit. I got lucky: the weather cleared up nicely and I could actually see my route. Beautiful countryside! Most of the route was in open grassy slopes with periodic rocky bits to get around. Not many big trees except at the summit. I hiked down with another hiker, one of the through-hikers who'd been on the trail for 40 days. He was cool but I forget his name. I was back to my car right at 4 pm. Virginia's highpoint, #29 overall, check. Now, onto Kentucky's Black Mountain.