Good bye to Woods Hole…thanks for protecting me from the crazy rain storm last night (it was like a fire hose). I had a well earned massage before my departure to help my back and body.

A pano from the Blue Ridge

A Blue Ridge Selfie

A hitch into the town of Pearisburg to resupply…he even offered to loan me his car for the next two days if I needed it !

“Little Kiss” (his last name is Bucino…Italian for little kiss) hanging out at our palace for the night. I know what you are thinking…”indoors two nights in a row!” A practical solution to get all our town chores done efficiently, plus a reward for 155 miles completed in the previous 7 days.
Our “Holiday Lodge” across from the Food Lion…life could not be easier!

LK gave himself a haircut with some kids craft-scissors and a razor (look at his head in mirror). I recommended he wear a hat whenever hitching a ride.

The best part of my resupply box, Andrea’s Bug Juice art 🙂

Today started with some morning Trail Magic. The shelter we stayed near last night had a notice that the local church has a “Hiker Feed” Monday mornings from 9-12 and they will pick us up at the road crossing 5 miles down trail. Needless to say we were there waiting and ready by 8:30. Five minutes later this car came by and whisked us 3 miles down the raid to the church.

This is Tough Love and Little Kiss who I’ve been leap frogging and hiking with since Hot Springs. We are loaded up to go to the church. Little Kiss (on right) actually stayed at the same lodge as me the night I flew to Atlanta and started hiking the same day. He’s almost 65 and cranks out some big miles!

Hikers Feeding in the church basement.

Everyone’s packs lined up outside the church (near Bastian, VA).

The ride back to the trailhead.

The rolling Blue Ridge Mountains

Trail Magic #2 today. Two thru hikers from last year who live in Mass were returning the favor.

An interesting sign…These nice folks provide the barrel for hikers to get rid of their trash.

We passed mile 600 today !

This is a cool footbridge I crossed over a river this morning.

This was posted on a shelter I stopped at for breakfast around 8am. A preemptive strike…but word on the trail is the guy who wrote the sign snores and doesn’t know it !

This is the Chestnut Ridge Shelter on top of a 2000′ climb. A great lunch spot out of the wind (fully enclosed). I think high winds are fairly regular…the roof was being held onto the structure with thick metal cables all the way around.

Unfortunately, it was either hazy or treed-in most of the day obscuring the views…so not too many pics today.

I thought I’d take some time to explain my typical routine:

Generally, I wake up ~6am (when sun comes up now) and lay in my sleeping bag until 6:15-6:20. Then I get all my gear packed up and organized leaving snacks and lunch food accessible for the day. Rain jacket stays on the outside of the pack for quick access in case of rain or wind (although I just use my umbrella for most rain). I have one liter of water filtered the night before with some bug juice powder added.

Recently, I have been able to wear shorts and t-shirt in the AM with my cycling sleeves and sometimes my rain jacket to keep me warm, and I’ll wear a buff on my head/ears and maybe gloves if it’s chilly. By mid morning I can shed most of the layers keeping my sleeves on because I can slide them up and down.

I’ll eat a granola bar while I’m walking and stop for some more food at 9/9:30 at a shelter or a nice creek. Then I’ll push on with minimal stops until about noon depending on what’s ahead. Most days I will do lunch between 1:30 and 2:30. This is usually my longest break of the day, ~45 mins. Any longer and things start to cease up.

I’ll tend to take some short breaks for water filtering or at a view point / rd crossing etc. and most days I will be at camp between 6:00 and 7:30. After setting up, eating, filtering water I will write in my journal until about 9pm. Then I will go in my tent and relax and write the daily blog post on my phone and read my saved online NY Times (I can usually download it at lest every’ other day). I’m usually asleep by 10:30.

The hiker named Lucky I met a couple weeks ago who thru hiked last year at age 72yr had a good philosophy…
Thru hiking is like a job and you make your big money before 8am and after 5pm

I think this captures it perfectly..most days I am doing 8+ miles before/ after these times, and that’s how I turn a solid 15 mile day into a big 23 mile day. I imagine with more daylight hours and some easier terrain coming, these distances will go up as well.

Good night

  A beautiful morning with no fog. This is looking down into the valley that I-81 travels through.

  A historic one room school house next to the trail.

  We traveled through some rolling farmland part of the day.

  Made a quick stop in Atkins to resupply (drying out wet socks from 2-days ago).

  I also picked up the package that my Trail Angel, John, sent me with my lost cycling sleeves…he also through in a couple double size Snickers bars!! Trail Angels are the best.

  I probably climbed over 10 or more of these today to get over the barbed wire that keeps the cattle penned in. Maybe it should be a new Olympic event… fence-stile jumping.

  The first rhododendron in full bloom.

  It was amazing to realize I’ve completed 1/4 of the trail…and scary to think I still have 75% to go (1641 miles!).

  This heifer was blocking my way…she ran away prettyquick when I waived my poles.

  A couple short evening showers and some more meadow hiking.

  This is what’s left of the 5lbs of Seven Layer bars Katy and Todd sent me. I’d been meaning to take a pic for days but we kept eating them so fast Theyvwere gone by the time I remembered. I’m not sure of all the ingredients but I wouldn’t give it to young children unless you want them bouncing off the walls. My best guess is that they include: coconut, butter, sugar, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips?, sweetened condensed milk, graham cracker crust? They are a calorie and fat powerhouse ! Thanks Katy and Todd

For those who didn’t see this video of the blizzard on facebook:
https://youtu.be/-BVoAnFuhPQ

FYI, Salty took a Zero day (day off=zero miles) in Marion to recover from our wet, cold snowy adventure. Hopeful he catches up when I resupply in a couple days.

Lastly, I really appreciate everyones comments and word of encouragement. I hope you can understand I have fairly limited internet access, and when I do I’m usually burning half my battery uploading my blog post on a windy ridgetop. I typically read emails I my tent righ before I fall asleep 🙂 I hope to be able to reply back when I’m in town with a power supply and a good signal.

The snow last night turned to rain by early morning and had cleared out by the the time I headed out…but it was slow going getting out of my warm sleeping bag. I love the spooky looking trees in the fog…seems like a regular occurrence most mornings recently.

Some leftover snow from yesterday.

The water was flowing a little heavier than normal after all the precip.

These Trail Angels were out for a day hike. Curly, in the middle, is a Triple Cronwer (AT, PCT, CDT).

This is the trail magic they left us by the roadside….the homemade cookies and Coke were a hit.

Moo

The impressive stone Trimpi shelter was a relaxing lunch stop…the sun even popped out for a minute.

A field of tiny yellow flowers.

A couple short rain showers later and just about 24 miles got me to the Partnership Shelter. It’s a couple hundred yards from a USFS visitor center where they have an outdoor courtesy and you get pizza/Chinese food delivered. Salty decided to hitch into town from the road crossing.

Temps are supposed to be back near 70 tomorrow which will be great!

It rained quite a bit last night but when we woke it was dry.

We started the morning with a 2000′ climb to White Top at 5200′. All the rain had frosted everything over at these higher elevations…

and there was some snow too!

We spent the rest of the early afternoon working our way toward and over Mt Rogers.

More spooky forests.

Barely above freezing but we stayed warm hiking (uphill).

A good view near Mt Rogers.

Then we entered Grayson Highlands and got to see the famous wild ponies!

They were everywhere. Unfortunately, it was cold and a bit windy so we didn’t linger.

We passed the 500 mile mark today!

From here the weather took a turn for the worse. At first it was light snow, then heavier snow. There were a couple of inches of wet snow covering the trees and ground. Our gear kept us relatively dry and warm, but after several hours we were hoping for a dry shelter…but all full 😦 so we pitched our tents at 7:30, ate inside them and went to bed listening to snow/ rain come down. We dropped about 1500′ in elevation so there’s not quite as much snow down here, but definitely wet! I wish I had gotten more pics of the snow covered trees and trail but my hands were too cold to take out of my gloves. Salty did get a video which I should be able to post when I get wifi.

(Photos from Salty)

Hopefully things dry out and warm up tomorrow. Otherwise we might need to make a quick hitch into town. Hard to believe we were drinking tons of water and getting baked by the sun just three days ago!

This wasn’t in the brochure!

It was a leisurely morning, but since we are used to getting up early we were walking over to Mojoes for breakfast by 7:30 for some of their great food. This is Pharmacist (his mom sent him off with a lot of Meds) showing off a couple of his many plates.

We headed out of town on the Virginia Creeper Trail, a well known rail trail that attracts a lot of visitors. It’s very civilized with bathrooms, benches and garbage cans every so often.

Walking over one of the many old railroad trestles.

The beautiful Laurel River accompanied us most of the way today.

We are still in the lowlands but will be hiking over the highest point in Virginia tomorrow, Mt. Rogers.

Lots of moss all over the trees and rocks.

This is a black Rat snake which are fairly common on the AT around here. This one didn’t even flinch and almost looked like a toy. Some of them can grow up to 8′ long.

These were some folks we met while admire ng the snake. They were out riding the Creeper Trail for the day.

We were camped among the spruce trees again on a soft pine needle floor…perfect!

This is John. He is my personal trail angel for finding my wool cycling sleeves which I wear almost everyday (he’s holding them). I accidentally dropped them from a pocket on my pack several days ago and he saw my plea for help in the shelter register (with my phone #) to keep an eye out. He was hiking southbound on a weekend trip and stumbled upon them…Then was nice enough to send them ahead to me. I hope to be reunited with my sleeves on Sat…thanks John!

This is a video of Laurel Falls from two days ago:

  It rained very hard last night starting at 6:30 (I was in a shelter) and on and off throughout the night. I got an early start at 6:30am in a damp fog but not too cold. It was nice to not pack up a went tent. This picture has a hiker I met named Little Kiss from Helena, MT. He’s almost 65 and is killing it on the trail. He started the same day I did and stayed at the Hiker Hostel the same day as well.

  
The sign is a little hard to read, but I just crossed into Virginia…

  
The trail is in VA for the next 500+ miles !
Damascus, VA is is known as Trail Town USA. Not only does the AT go right down Main St. but the Trans America bicycle route does as well. Their annual Trail Days festival starts in about a week, when this little town of 800 will swell to almost 30,000 !

The sidewalks are very welcoming 🙂

  The Hikers Inn is a great place to stay…a beautiful home built in 1847.
They even loan you hospital scrubs to wear while doing your laundry (a fairly common practice in the hiker-lodging community). The town looks like it’s hosting a Surgery Convention with everyone walking around in scrubs (or rain gear…another common laundry day outfit)

  This is from a great art studio in town, Matt has some other very unique work…check it out here: AsTheSawTurns.com

I found a beard trimmer and took about 15yrs of gray off my face.

   I’ve reworked my rough schedule since I was about 5 days early arriving here. This is what it might look like depending on how things go.

A couple quick videos to give you a taste of the trail in Tennessee:

Much too late now…good night.

A foggy start to the day, but very comfortable temps for walking.

I crossed paths with Tough Love after leap frogging since Hot Springs and we hiked together for a good part of the day. We were treated to some cold Pepsi left in this bear proof locker. Oddly, they only had zero calories Pepsi Max…trail magic is always good but we need every calorie we can get! (it still tasted good 🙂

Walking briefly through some pretty rolling farmland…

then reentering the woods.

Home for the night. It’s odd feeling like I’m cutting my day short after 19 miles, but it was only 3:15 and the weather was great. I had gotten word of some big rain and thunderstorm rolling in by 2pm, which then became 5pm and at last report was 8pm. I was able to check the radar on hill right before the shelter and it looked like a can’t miss storm regardless of the exact time, so I called it quits a bit early. Either way I will be getting into Damascus before noon tomorrow. Salty was a bit behind me all day after a late start. When he showed up ~4pm he had decided to push on to town for a 30mi day (easier terrain today) and had booked a place to stay knowing it probably be getting late and he’d prob be wet. We had already reserved a place to stay for tomorrow night so I will catch up to him later.

There were quite a few tents set up by the time the rain came at 6:45.

Looking forward to crossing into Virginia tomorrow and the easy walk into Damascus with plenty of time to take care of a long list of town chores and hopefully some relaxation.

I’ve started writing down some of my profound Trail Wisdom I come up with while hiking (typically shared in the shelter registers, so I thought I’d share on the blog as well:

1. Maine won’t come to you
Meaning,no more sitting around the shelter or hanging out in town…you need to keep moving!

2. Slack-packing is just a gateway drug
Slack-packing is hiking without your pack because either you or your pack are getting shuttled. Lots of lodges/hostels will offer shuttles so you can do this…and stay at their place for 2-nights instead of one. The gateway drug reference is b/c at first  you justify slack packing is OK cause you are still “hiking”, and the next day you will be justify skipping whole sections of trail. It’s a slippery slope!

3. You can’t slack pack your mind !

This is a logical follow up to the previous statement. While you might be able to slack-pack your pack/gear, the bigger problem for most folks is their mental state…and you can’t slack pack your mind!