Miles today: 19.7
Total miles: 1555.5
Town today! We woke up excited to get to Pearisburg by tonight. In our guidebook, it has maps of the towns along the trail and Pearisburg has everything a hiker needs: fast food places, a grocery store, and places to stay.
With town on the mind, the hiking flew by. For a while now, like the past month or so, it has become the norm to not really pass anyone at all during the day. At first it was kind of depressing to not see anyone all day but now I’m used to it. In touristy areas, like the shenendoahs, we see plenty of people to make up for it. It’s a special day now though to pass another hiker. However, lately, we’ve started to pass hunters everyday. Today was no exception. I passed two, one creepily lurking in the woods and another right on trail. Passing hunters is the most shocking experience each time it happens. They all wear camo and are creepily silently lurking along the trail so you don’t notice them until the last minute. And then they don’t say anything because they are trying to be quiet so you kind of exchange this silent hello and head nod as you gape at their giant gun. Apparently it’s legal to hunt on/along the trail as long as you don’t shoot down or across the trail. This is something I totally disagree with as the AT is a highly trafficked walking trail and allowing hunters along it seems to me an invitation for accidents to occur. I have a blaze orange vest on my pack so hunters will see me from afar but I still get nervous around them that they’ll shoot me. Also I thinking hunting is cruel and dumb so I try to make lots of noise to piss off the hunters as I pass them. I purposely say hello really loud and rustle the leaves To scare off any animals. HA I showed them.
Anyway, back to today. We had high hopes for Pearisburg and as we approached town around 330, we had our first sights of it. We exited the woods and were greeted first with a landfill and then some type of factory or plant spewing black smoke out that smelled absolutely disgusting. Welcome to town!!! It’s times like these I enjoy taking a big whiff of the “fresh” air, sighing, and saying “ah, the great outdoors”. We had a road walk from the factory to town that emerged in a residential neighborhood. The first house you see when leaving the trail and heading to town is a trailer with children’s toys scattered across the yard, an overturned car seat in browning grass, and a confederate flag flying proudly above the door. Oh pearisburg, this was definitely not how I imagined it. As we walked toward the restaurants and such we passed a ton of abandoned businesses and houses and even a motel that had burned down! It was a hilarious experience and a lesson to not have too high of expectations. Nonetheless, it was still nice to be in civilization. Delta and I stayed at a motel and ran into the two southbound guys that were ahead of us. It was milkrun and Cerveza, the two 19 year olds. I’m apparently stuck with 19 year old boys now. We did the usual town stint: enjoyed a hot shower, pigged out, resupplied, and watched movies on TV. As sketchy as Pearisburg is, it still was nice to rejevuenate and stay somewhere actually warm for a change.