Day 39 - Damascus & Drying Out

Tuesday, May 12th - Got up at 7:20 or so to clear skies overhead, mountains still sheathed in fog, pretty cool yet. Got our laundry together and headed up the street to "Cowboys" - a combination restaurant and mini-mart. The laundromat was across the street, so after ordering breakfast I headed over and started our laundry. Priciest laundromat on the trail so far, but beggars can't be choosey, and we'd soon be personna non grata in the entire state if we didn't wash our stuff. We're pretty rank, so you pay the freight whatever it is.

At Cowboys, Mark got the Hiker's Special, but I stayed with pancakes, and gave the third one to Mark to augment the Special (which in reality wasn't all that much food, though it was cheap enough). We chatted with a local who had some knowledge of upcoming towns and crossings, learning about possible shuttles back to Damascus from the Troutdale area (where we plan to be in 3 days, when Trail Days gets fired up). I went back to the laundromat to switch our stuff to a dryer, then back to Cowboys. Other hikers showed up, and I spent a few minutes getting additional numbers entered into my new phone, including Gary's.

After about 1 1/2 hours, we both headed back to the laundromat and finished up there, then returned to the B&B, stopping several times to chat with other hiker groups we knew. Once back, Mark headed off to the Mt. Rogers Outfitters for fuel, then to the Post Office. I gathered my gear off the clothesline, re-sorted the rest of my laundry, packed, and moved everything to the front porch to free up the room. At 10:45 I headed back over to the library, but their Internet was down, so I returned to the B&B just as Mark was finishing up his repacking. We both weighed our packs, and came in almost identically, around 38 pounds each, with water and 3 days of food; not bad, but I suspect we'll be below 35 each when we lose the last of our cold weather gear; at least I hope! We both need to pay closer attention to how much food we have - so far we've pulled into each resupply point with a day or two (or more) of food remaining, and that's just weight for no purpose other than exercise. And I think we're getting enough exercise already!

We saddled up at 11:20 and headed to the end of town, where we ate lunch at a Subways. Then back to the trail (12:30 or so), which for the first mile was along the Virginia Creeper Trail (a rather famous bike trail down here). We promptly missed the turn-off for the actual A.T. (no double blaze!!!), so lost 20 minutes figuring that out and getting back where we belonged. At least it was a beautiful day by this point, clear and cool. We humped over two pretty stiff mountains, but it was considerably easier - the trails in VA are (in general) much nicer than in GA, NC, or TN - better graded, wider, and with more switchbacks. They have their rough spots, but it's so far easy to see why people say that the AT gets a lot easier once you reach VA.

We arrived at our intended destination (Saunders Shelter) at 5:00 pm, and met Frebird coming out just as we got to the access (side) trail. He indicated that there was a campsite with water another 2 miles down the trail, and since it was only 5 pm, we decided to continue on and make tomorrow's hike 18 or 23 miles planned) that much shorter. So we climbed yet another minor mountain peak (not bad since we were already up on the ridge anyway), then down to a gap, getting to the site at 6:15. Nice site under large white pines, reasonably flat. However, the water was from two rather stagnant looking ponds, which were unappealing, so I headed uphill past the upper pond and found the actual source, much better looking. Judging from the various trails, most people were taking water from the ponds, so maybe it's not so surprising how many people have been coming up sick these past 3 - 4 weeks. As I've mentioned before, a lot of A.T. Thru-Hikers could use about 2 years in the Boy Scouts; they'd be a hell of a lot better at basic camping skills.

It got chilly pretty quick once the sun went behind the mountains, so we ate dinner fairly quickly, hung the bear-bags, got a little cleaned up, and hit the rack around 8:30 or so. Freebird and another couple (Bark and Berry) shared the site with us, and there were two other single campers on the other side of the ponds. 11 miles today, in another semi-nero; not bad.