I have been slacking on updating my blog big time lately. I mean I have been busy walking twenty miles a day and all, but still. I feel guilty like a student that didn’t do their homework. Well not actually since we all know students don’t feel guilty for not doing homework. You get the point. I’m going to try to catch up on my blog today. In the meantime, watch this video Wolfbird made:
Day 104 (10/26): Thunder hill ridge shelter to Jenkins creek
Miles today: 14
Total miles: 1434.2
It was so cold last night. Being in my tent definitely helped keep me a bit warmer but I was for sure pushing the limits of my 15 degree sleeping bag. I slept with my head completely under my sleeping bag and slept pretty well given the frigid temperatures. I did wake up at 430 am a bit cold and on the verge of being uncomfortable but was able to fall back asleep. I woke up at 730 delighted to find I’d survived the night. However, waking up meant I had to get out of my sleeping bag and I was not excited for that. I had an actual time limit too because we were meeting deltas parents at 2 pm so I had no time to be lazy. Delta kindly brought me my food bag so I was able to eat breakfast in my sleeping bag in my tent and put off getting up for as long as possible. Finally I put on every item of clothing I have and mustered up the motivation to get up.
Wow was it cold! I packed up as quick as possible and finally warmed up as I got walking. There was frost on the ground everywhere. Brrrr. The hiking was pretty easy and mostly downhill and we made decent time. We passed two guys out for the weekend and one of them told us his gun must’ve fallen out of his holster while he was hiking. He followed this up by saying if we came across the gun it was ours for the keeping! What. Welcome to the south I guess. I don’t think I’d ever seen a gun in person or known someone who owns a gun or even hunts before this trip.
Deltas parents had told him if they got to the road crossing before us they’d start hiking north to come meet us. We got to the road crossing around 230 and found their car empty. Delta called them and found out they had set out hiking… 40 minutes in the wrong direction! Oops.
When his parents returned from their hike, we set out to find a hotel and then go eat at the Home Place. We’ve been hearing about how we need to go to this place since Maine. It’s a family style place where they bring unlimited plates of food to the table and you eat family style until you can’t eat anymore. We got there at what we thought was an early dinner time, around 5 or 530, to find tons of people waiting inside and outside already! This place is popular and not just with hikers. In fact pretty much everyone there was a local. The restaurant was in a house set between mountains with beautiful sprawling fields surrounding it. You could wait inside or outside. We waite in the car for a bit and then came to wait inside because it was chilly to find some entertainment while we waited. In this side room there were all these chairs set up in rows and an older man and his grandson were playing guitar and singing. All their songs were religious and about Jesus and on some of the more well known ones the people watching in the chairs would all join in singing. Wow I am not in the north anymore. I had a good laugh imagining this scene in Boston and how people would react to it. I also saw some guy with a gun in its holster on his belt. Like what? You need to bring your gun out to eat? I don’t think that’s something I’ll ever get used to or be comfortable with.
After waiting an hour or so we got to eat and I was not disappointed. Delta and I are like the professionals we are. It reminded me of a big thanksgiving meal. We did have a funny moment where we’d cleared nearly all the plates except one little bowl. Deltas mom asked why we didn’t eat it and none of us could figure out what it was. We smelled it and it smelled like apples and we realized oh it Must be applesauce! Delta and I scooped some onto our plates and tried it only to scrunch up our noses. It was SO cinnamony. Like almost unbearably so. A few minutes after eating it I had an epiphany. OH MY GOD I said. It was apple BUTTER. We were supposed to put it on our biscuits but instead we just ate it by itself. I’m not cut out for southern living.
After dinner we went back to the hotel–delta and his family are so kind and are letting me stay with them. They enjoyed watching their Ohio state buckeyes on tv but conceded to switching to the World Series during commercials. Yes!
Day 103 (10/25): Buena vista to Thunder Hill Ridge Shelter
Miles today: 14.9
Total miles: 1420.2
While the distance we travelled today was pretty short and easy, it was almost entirely uphill. Virginia had these long, drawn out mountains so unlike in Maine or NH, where the trail goes straight up a mountain in a mile or two, in Virginia there are endless switchbacks and five to seven mile climbs up mountains. It’s not terrible, but it can get tedious especially when it’s a series of mountains like it was today.
It was chilly again today all day but at least it was sunny. While Delta and I were taking a break Delta heard a noise and we turned to see an adorable bear cub walk by probably 25 yards away. It didn’t even notice us so we got to see it just walking around downhill down the mountain. My first actual bear sighting! Finally.
I was pretty nervous because the forecast low overnight was 26 degrees. And that is in the valley, in town. The shelter we were staying at was at 4000 feet. I was slightly nervous I’d die of hypothermia. But it’s stuff like this that makes the trail exciting, right?!
We got to the shelter around 530 and it was so cold we could already see our breath even though the sun hadnt even gone down yet. It was kind of windy too. Delta and I then tried to construct a kind of fortress against the elements. All the shelters are three walled—they have an open face so the wind gets in easily. We used our tent rain flys and hung them to create a fourth wall. Ingenious plan. Until ten minutes later as we sat in our still cold fortress and then saw a mouse run by. Great, we’d created a sealed off barrier against the wind that at the same time locked us in with the mice
We ended up giving up tht plan and set up our tents instead. Supposedly tents are supposed to be ten degrees warmer than the outside air. We shall see how that works out. If I survive. Mwahaha.
Day 102 (10/24): brown mountain creek shelter to Buena Vista VA
Miles today: 20
Total miles: 1405.6
It’s been a long few 22 mile days in a row so I woke up tired and excited to get to town by the end of the day. Also it has been so cold all the time lately that I was excited to be able to just go inside a restaurant for warmth for a bit. Our plan was to hitch into Glasgow VA, a small town that has a free shelter and showers in their town park. The day was cold, very chilly with weather in the 40s. It even hailed on us on a mountain top! And snowflakes drifted around throughout the day. I did not expect the weather to be like this so far south and in October!
Delta and I got to the road around 430 and started hitching. Luckily we looked miserable and cold enough that we were Picked up pretty quickly. A woman in her 60s actually turned around to come pick us up. She was immediately hilarious, as she had to clean some stuff out from her backseat and there were a bunch of empty wine bottles and she declared in a thick southern accent “oh haha those are for crafts. IM NOT DRUNK!” Oh boy. We also learned within minutes of her picking us up that she’s had probably 30 something speeding tickets in her life and said she needs to be careful because she’s on some sort of driving probation. Her last ticket was for going 65 in a 35. Oh boy, comforting stuff to tell strangers you just picked up AND ARE CURRENTLY DRIVING. After a few minutes, Memmaw, as she came to be known, offered to let us stay at her home so we wouldn’t have to sleep outside in the predicted below freezing temperatures. We very quickly accepted her offer. And so began a very strange and very stereotypically southern/hick adventure.
Apologies in advance if I offend anyone by joking about and poking fun at my experiences at Memmaws. It was just so unlike any experience I’ve had and so stereotypically southern that I couldn’t help but laugh. In the end, I’m so grateful for the kindness Memmaw and LB showed us.
I don’t even know how to accurately describe my experience at LB and Memmaws. When we got there, Memmaw had to check with LB, her husband, that it was ok we stay. LB had an even thicker southern accent than Memmaw and had a way of saying things with absolutely no experession so I could never tell if he was serious or joking. Literally the first thing he said to us was “y’all have any guns with ya?” To which we replied no. After that it was confirmed we could stay. The room we stayed in was like a Disney version of Hoarders–everything imaginable was Mickey Mouse, from the blankets to mirrors to figurines on every shelf. LB is apparently a big fisherman and a big hunter. They had a nice big gun cabinet right in the living room. Memmaw said she doesn’t like to hunt all that much–her preferred type of hunting is “shooting gophers under the barn from the bathroom window”. She was dead serious. LB taught us the term “nary one” which means none. He gave the example of if someone asks how many fish you caught and you hadn’t had any luck, you reply “nary one”.
I was excited to get to watch a World Series game! I watched with Memmaw upstairs while delta and LB watched downstairs. Apparently Delta had some priceless moments with LB including details of how sometimes LB can’t keep his hands off Memmaw while they’re out in a boat fishing, comparing it to the song WagonWheel’s “rock me mama like a wagon wheel”. Apparently there were some confederate flags downstairs I didn’t have the pleasure of seeing.
Memmaw cooked us dinner and then breakfast in the morning and dropped us off at the trail. But not before initiating a prayer circle in the parking lot to send us off. I am so incredibly grateful for Memmaw and LBs kindness and the many new and mostly hilarious experiences I had with them. This was confirmation that I am in fact in the south.