Day 38 - Rain and into Virginia

Monday, May 11th - Sent from the public library in Damascus, far southwest Virginia. After my report last night, it did in fact start raining again at 2:45am, arriving sudden and fairly hard. Lucky we had the warning from the weather band radio (and battened down the hatches before bedding down) or we'd have had a lot of wet gear before we could have gotten everything under cover. Rained on and off til about 7 am. We got up at 6:25, hit the trail about 7:05. It had been forecast to be an eventually sunny day, but in fact it was dreary, misty, and drizzley all day (still gray here at 5:30 pm). We had a much easier trail today, and it showed, as we covered 13 miles in just under 5 hours, including our breaks. That's our fastest speed yet on the trek. Means we hiked 50 miles in 2 1/2 days; not bad. Only real highlight on the trail is we crossed from Tennessee to Virginia at about 10:30 am. No state boundary there, other than a thin line of rocks, plus a sign indicating that we were entering the Mt. Rogers Recreation Area/Thomas Jefferson National Forest. I guess we were expecting more, like sunshine, birds singing, bands playing, pretty girls with laurels, you know (dream on -- not trail magic, but trail delusions?) .... Well, just more drizzle and mist, but nonetheless we're now in our 4th state, and past the 1/5th mark of the trek (roughly 470miles). And I suppose you could say we're now "home," even if it'sprobably 350 miles to Arlington from here.

Damascus - we reserved a room at the Montgomery B&B, very nice place.A little pricey, but all the less expensive lodging has been snapped upby other hikers planning to spend the week here for the upcoming annualTrail Days festival (60,000 people expected in a town with a populationof about 5,000). We will probably return for a day later this week,probably coming back from Troutdale, our next resupply point.

Did lunch at a Pizza Plus all-you-can-oink buffet, then bought food ata Food City. I personnally barely needed anything, having overboughtat Wal-Mart 3 days ago. Hit the Post Office for Mark's latest pickup(maps of VA), then the Mt. Rogers Outfitters (just a look-see), on theway back to the B&B. Hung some of my stuff on their clothes line(hopefully the rain is now over), and headed over to the library tocheck email (one each from Pete Davey and Pauline Clark). We'replanning at eating dinner at a nearby restaurant, Quincy's. I am stilllosing weight, and am now around 150 pounds. But the rate of loss hasdramatically slowed since I started forcing myself to eat more despitemy appetite saying "enough already!" Tomorrow we'll probably have anearly lunch and head on out immediately afterwards, doing 9 miles tothe first shelter north of town. So another sort of reverse "nero,"though 9 miles is not a trivial walk, and there are some very toughclimbs over the next three days, including Mt. Rogers, the VirginiaHigh Point, which we'll do this Wednesday afternoon. We hope to meetMark Barker and Mel Herrmann this Friday at Trail Days - it will benice to see some friendly faces from back home. Time to go!

Rest of report for 5/11:
The weather began to improve rapidly, to clear skies - quite a change. After reviewing the Weather Channel reports, I decided to put my various still wet items outside on the clothes line, including my tent, tarp, boots, and so on; this was around 6 pm or so. Mark followed suit shortly thereafter. Hopefully this will save us 1 or 2 pounds of weight tomorrow (wet stuff is heavy!) Once that was done, everyone in the house (including Gary (Happy), Jonathan Mauer (Blacklist, a former Life Scout from Troop 991 in Springfield), and Freebird (don't know his actual name) went over to Quincey's restaurant for dinner, also enjoying a duo playing a guitar and a fiddle; not bad). Dinner was very enjoyable, talking about the various oddball personalities we had run across since starting the trip. One of the sad things was how many people were dropping off the trail here, or at least so stating. We learned of dropouts at the grocery store, at the library, and even on the street, including many people we had been leapfrogging with for weeks. In some cases the money had run out, in others the enthusiasm was gone - maybe not surprising with all the atrocious weather over the past 6 weeks. Other people had been yellow-striping and/or slack-packing, another 2 clear signs of giving up. Trail Days has a big "Hiker Parade" on either Friday or Saturday, and so everyone so inclined can kind of take their bows to the cheering thousands and head on home. At 475 miles or so, nothing to be ashamed of. We spent about an hour and a half at dinner, then headed back to continue sorting gear. I hit the rack around 9 pm, but Mark stayed downstairs to watch the house TV, some Clark Gable movie on TCM, then something on the History Channel I think he said. I slept "OK" - as I think I mentioned to Pete on the phone a couple of weeks ago, a bed now seems a bit strange and uncomfortable to sleep in, compared to tent living.
- Bob