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Lugnut
10-14-2004, 01:56
Does anyone know the story of the homeless lady living at fulhardt shelter? She had some interesting stories about Beau Gritz, Larry Flynt and the CIA. My hiking buddy filtered a lot of water for her and we left her some money and food. I had heard about her earlier from a couple guys we ran into and thought it might be "Muskrat", another homeless lady I met at wapiti. I'm considering moving into a shelter! :banana

Lone Wolf
10-14-2004, 06:24
You talking about "the Queen of England"? She's the lady I've met there several times.

Hikerhead
10-14-2004, 07:13
She's still in the area.

The Old Fhart
10-14-2004, 07:34
This past May when I was hiking through central Virginia I met this middle aged lady who had set her tent up about 50 feet north of Salt Pond Road, 3 miles north of Fullhardt Knob Shelter. She was set up right beside the trail and had ropes tied between two trees with plastic garbage bags hanging from the ropes. I would have thought "bearbagging" but the bottom of the bags barely cleared the ground. She obviously hadn't hiked because there were two rollaway suitcases on the ground outside her tent. I said "hi" and talked to her for a couple of minutes. When asked how she got there she said someone had dropped her off at the road. There was a far better spot just north of the road near a creek that wouldn't have been in sight of the road and near the water source but she hadn't gone there. She didn't sound extreme in any way but I got the feeling that all this was not quite normal. The next hiker I passed told me that she was the Queen of England. Apparently she moved south to Fullhardt Knob Shelter but I would assume the maintainers for that section won't let her stay there long.

shades of blue
10-14-2004, 07:39
I saw this same lady it seems, back in early July. She talked a lot about the CIA and bears, and all sorts of things. I didn't realize there was a side trail to the shelter that led away from the AT. I was setting up my hammock and tarp when suddenly she appeared at the shelter. She talked about not being able to breathe because of her polyurethane tent, and bears that did all sorts of wild stuff. In the morning she ate her breakfast, did her thing, and while I was breaking camp I started to say something to her, and she was gone. Very strange experience.

orangebug
10-14-2004, 07:50
Was this an extremely thin woman?

Lugnut
10-14-2004, 10:06
OB, she wasn't thin. She looked to be around 170 or more, gray hair, and a pleasant personality. She said she was born in 1940 but they had given her the wrong birth certificate with a 1939 date. She also said she was from Alabama. She said she walked 1 1/4 miles down the mountain on the old AT to get water from a creek since "they" were putting something in the water at the Fulhardt cistern. She was satisfied with the filtered water we left her with.
It is a shame that there are people living like this. I have heard of others living in shelters but she is only the second one I've come accross.

Lone Wolf
10-14-2004, 10:08
I've heard she spends time in a mental hospital during the winter months.

Kozmic Zian
10-14-2004, 10:44
Yea.....QEII. She's a lost soul on Life's Highway. Spoke to her in detail about her past once. She had all the ducks in a line when it came to her 'heritage' as the sole surviving heir to the 'Throne of England'. Seems, she says, she was the ill-legitimate child of Wallace Simpson and Edward III, the King, until he was deposed in 1939(?) for his 'philandering' with Simpson. They farmed her out to an Alabama couple before the British Press could get the story, so it seems. So here we have this poor homeless woman living up The Trail, who, if she's legit, should really be living in a Castle. Sounds uh.....crazy to me, You can go figure, too!....KZ@

p.s. Just one of the many 'sights' that make The Trail such an interesting do.:-?

shades of blue
10-14-2004, 11:50
OB
The woman I was thinking of was fairly thin but I wouldn't say like starving thin. She was definately paranoid about everything, but she was pretty interesting too. She seemed to have her daily life down to an art. I think being homeless would be sad, but she seemed to be able to take care of herself, at least physcially. L. Wolf, you say you think she spends time in a mental hospital in the winter. That's good. At least she would be warm and dry. I will admit she weirded me out a little, but some friends hiked into the shelter that evening, so I wasn't alone.

Lugnut
10-14-2004, 13:13
Actually, come to think of it, she did look a lot like Wallace Simpson. Maybe she's telling the truth! :-? :rolleyes:

Hikerhead
10-14-2004, 14:22
http://www.whiteblaze.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/893/password/0/sort/1/cat/500/page/3

orangebug
10-14-2004, 14:42
Yeh, I assumed it was Peggy, but wondered about another lady I met a few years ago near Fontana.

bulldog
10-14-2004, 14:52
Does anyone know the story of the homeless lady living at fulhardt shelter? She had some interesting stories about Beau Gritz, Larry Flynt and the CIA. My hiking buddy filtered a lot of water for her and we left her some money and food. I had heard about her earlier from a couple guys we ran into and thought it might be "Muskrat", another homeless lady I met at wapiti. I'm considering moving into a shelter! :banana

I go to the Mont Alto campus of Penn State and the A.T. is about 3 miles away. I alternate between sleeping on campus and tumbling run shelter. Peaceful living. The winter will be interesting.

Lugnut
10-14-2004, 17:15
Hikerhead, that's her. She's a little heavier now and the shelter was not as messy. How did you get her to sit for a picture?

Hikerhead
10-14-2004, 18:31
The picture was taken from a news paper article about 5 years ago. Nice, long story about her and her history.

About a week before the story came out, I hiked up there, not knowing anything about her. This was in the winter and when we got to the shelter here's all of this gear, tarps and stuff everywhere. Nobody was around that we could see. We took some pictures. A week later the story came out in the newspaper. A few days before we hiked up there we had a really really bad ice storm. We hiked up the old AT and we had to crawl over and under and around at least a hundred pine trees. We couldn't believe somone had been staying here. Must have been an awful night. And then at work a few days later, I was talking to a girl who lived close to the trailhead and she said this older lady came knocking on her door the night of the storm. She didn't know what to do with her, so she called 911, but she feed her while she waited for the police. She was the Queen.

I scanned the whole story. IM me if anybody wants to see it.

Mini-Mosey
10-20-2004, 18:12
That could be me about twenty years from now. Who knows.....

Jack Tarlin
10-20-2004, 18:37
Interesting thread....i've run into her before. A little odd, but perfectly harmless.

And Koz, thanx for the history lesson but I rather doubt she said she was the illegitimate daughter of Edward III as he died, if memory serves, in 1377. I think you're thinking of Edward VIII who wasn't deposed, but instead abdicated the throne in 1936 and married Wallace Simpson in June of '37. And he wasn't deposed for "philandering", which generally refers to cheating on one's wife. At the time of the affair, he wanted her to BECOME his wife, and gave up the throne when this proved impossible. They remained married til his death in the seventies.

In any case, she's a funny duck, but I don't think she's six hundred years old.