Author: Julie Blouin

Miles today: 21.4

Total miles: 1586.9

I awoke this morning to the sounds of a rooster crowing as the sun rose. That was a first on this trip. I got up to discover the Canadians had already left–I was sad I didn’t get to say goodbye to them or even get their address to send them a postcard. Delta and I opted not to have breakfast at Wood’s Hole, but the owner, Michael, told us we’d be able to have coffee even without breakfast. But when we went into the house, we got yelled at for coming inside because it was apparently still closed. We waited around in the frigid cold for a while, in hopes of eventually being told we could come in for coffee, but that didn’t happen. So we had our poptarts and set off into the cold morning.

Not too much to report on the hiking today. It was chilly all day. Got to the shelter as it was starting to get dark. With daylight savings, it now gets dark a little after 5. Whereas I used to eat dinner around 530 or 6 and go to bed by 8, I now eat around 5 and am ready for bed by 630. And then wake up with the sun around 630. I get an insane amount of sleep yet every morning I still find myself wanting to stay in bed an extra hour. That may have to do with the freezing temperatures rather than the amount of sleep, however.

Just as I was drifting off to sleep around 7:45 I was woken up to noises outside the shelter. Cerveza and Milkrun had just arrived, nighthiking in. They then went to get water, which was quite a walk at this shelter, so just as I was falling back to asleep, I got woken up again to the sounds of them coming back from getting water. It was well after 9pm once they settled into bed and I was able to fall asleep. I was annoyed that I didn’t get a chance to sleep until about 3 hours after I first lay down, but oh well.

Miles today: 10.4
Total miles: 1565.5

Today was such an unexpectedly good day. First off, I didn’t know it was daylight savings until I couldn’t fall asleep last night and was messing around on my phone at midnight and found out online. That made me happy and I enjoyed my extra hour of sleep. In town I tried to talk to my friend Paul, who is in Madagascar and who I haven’t talked to since June. We tried to Skype but the interet connection wasn’t the best so I only briefly saw him but it was so good to hear from an old friend.
Before we hit the trail , delta and I went to Dairy Queen (for the third time in the less than 24 hours we’ve been in town). We ate there and ended up meeting a middle aged Canadian couple who had hiked northbound this year. They were super interesting in that they didn’t hike together. Well sometimes they did but more often they hiked at their own paces and met up every so often in towns along the way. The guy, Jelly (his wife is peanut butter, how adorable), was also training during his hike for a 100 Mile race so he did some crazy stuff like hike ahead then run back to where his wife was. Anyway, they were so friendly and nice to talk to. They are currently driving around and going back to trail towns etc to see places theyd been to on their hike. They ended up giving us a ride back to the trailhead. Their next stop was Woods hole Hostel, which was ten miles away ad where delta and I planned to stay tonight. Since they were going there anyway, they offered to take our packs there to make our hike easier. I immediately jumped at the chance to slackpack while delta politely declined since he sets super high standards for himself about the rules he hikes by. Ha I have absolutely no problem giving away my pack for the day and only carrying my water bottles.
I had such a nice ten mile walk to woods hole without my pack. It was like a little walk in the woods!! If only every day were like this. On the way to woods hole delta and I ran into some guy taking a photo of a red chair by the trail. He said he’s a bed and breakfast owner and the chairs being passed along various B&Bs and came all the way from Cape cod. He actually took our photo with it and said he’s going to put it on the Red Chair Travels website. In other words, I became a celebrity today.

We got to woods hole around 445. The Canadian couple, peanut butter and jelly were going to stay the night too. There was also a big Irish family staying (not hikers). It was two sisters that now live in the states with their American husbands, their kids (4 total) and their parents. An adorable family reunion. Woods hole is this awesome log cabin and separate bunk house. They have a farm and have animals, including chickens and goats. They also apparently lead yoga and meditation sessions and give massages but I unfortunately didn’t partake in those.

I had such a great evening there nonetheless. I enjoyed talking with the Canadian couple–they actually are amongst my favorite people I’ve met this entire trip. They are so kind but also funny and sarcastic and by the end of the night we were having a blast poking fun at each other. The Irish family was also really interesting and it was a nice change of pace being around little kids since I never see kids being on the trail all the time. We had delicious homemade pizza with salad for dinner and before we ate we all went around and said something we are thankful for. It was such an international mix of people and we were all so different but it was like a little family meal. By the end of the meal my face hurt from smiling and laughing so much. We had to sleep outside in the bunkhouse without heat with a temperature of 31 degrees, but I went to bed with a smile on my face after an all around great day.

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.

Miles today: 18.5
Total miles: 1535.8

It was pretty windy overnight and as a result the trees lost many leaves and all of a sudden it looks like winter with bare trees all around. There are tons of leaves on the ground, in some places mid calf height. It’s kind of fun shuffling through them. I also love stepping on crunchy leaves and now I do that for like ten hours a day everyday so I’m a happy girl

I passed a day hiker today that said he’d stayed with two guys headed southbound last night. Catching up to new people! I couldn’t imagine who was ahead of me, as delta and I are kind of at the front of our bubble so I asked the guy what their names were. He hadn’t asked them so I asked what they looked like. He replied “male”. And I just stared for a couple seconds and he followed that up with “they had beards”. Not helpful. Later, after talking with delta he said he thought it was these two guys Cerveza and milk run, who he’d met a long time ago and who were also 19. I’d yet to meet them so I hoped to catch them eventually. I also am trying to catch this kid buddy backpacker. He is a five year old hiking the trail, trying to be the youngest to complete it. His parents switch off hiking with him while the other parent provides support–they slackpack everyday so they don’t have to carry weight. They are flip flopping so they’ve already done the northern section, summiting Katahdin in September and now are headed to springer. They are a week or so ahead f me but I’m not really making much progress on them. This five year old does serious miles! It’s a little embarrassing I can’t catch him.

Anyway, the hiking today was relatively flat for a while which was nice for a change. Good day but cold night, which seems to be becoming the norm.

Miles today: 22.5
Total miles: 1517.3

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! I’ve been looking forward to Halloween on the trail since July. I’ve been excited to hike in costume since then. Given that, you’d think I’d have an amazing costume. Unfortunately I didn’t come up with some brilliant costume idea and instead made my costume decision based on what I could find at the store. Unfortunately I waited too long to look for a costume and rather than having a decent selection at a Walmart or somewhere, I had to make do with the selection at a grocery store. So I ended up buying cat ears and face paint. Delta refused to paint whiskers on me this morning so I spent a good 15 minutes using my phone as a mirror trying not to smudge black paint all over my face. I forced delta to dress up for Halloween too (I’m such a kind hiking companion, I know). I gave him the face paint and told him to come up with something as I set off hiking.

The morning started out with a huge climb that I ascended way too fast and wore myself out on. Not to mention, it was pretty humid so I was sweating a bunch but I had my whiskers painted on my face so I couldn’t wipe my sweat without messing up the makeup so I was just a disgusting miserable mess by the time I got to the top of the hill. I took a break and waited for delta. When he finally appeared i burst out laughing. He’d painted what he said was supposed to be a delta, the triangle symbol, on his face. But it looked more like a huge black circle around his mouth and over his nose and he looked like Hannibal lector or something with a muzzle on. I could not stop laughing at him even when he was clearly unhappy at being forced to paint his face and not be able to wipe his sweat. Good times.

We stopped for lunch at a shelter and found basically a homeless guy living in the shelter. There are a handful of trail bums along the AT that often claim to be hiking but usually in reality are just kind of moving shelter to shelter, hitching into towns along the trail, etc because they have no home. This guy, whose name was Foot, claimed to be thru hiking and said he was almost done and would finish in about 200 miles in Damascus VA. We were slightly suspicious of this but oh well. He was only carrying ramen and tuna for food and kept eyeing our lunches. He saw Deltas smarties candies (of which he is carrying literally a pound, so muchfor hiking light) and kept asking for more smarties. Foot must’ve taken half a pound of them. He was a strange character who overshared personal stories of his troubled childhood and later alcoholism. He was pretty harmless though and ended up being the only person to see my cat costume.

It was a long day today especially after such a short day yesterday so I was exhausted by the time we got to the shelter. It rained overnight but had stoppe by the next morning–the ideal rain schedule!

Miles today: 14.6
Total miles: 1494.8

Our options for shelters to aim for today were either 14.6 miles or 24.7 miles. Originally (as in when we were in town planning), we planned to do 24.7 but after our late arrival last night and upon waking up to rain both Delta and I decided 14.6 was fine by us. We laid around in our warm sleeping bags watching the rain for a while this morning since we didn’t have to rush with such low mileage to do today. Two guys came to the shelter at about 930. One was named Hawk and he is hiking south all the way to Springer as a “warm up” for a northbound hike he plans to start in January. I found that absolutely crazy–hiking 1000 miles as preparation?! Not to mention STARTING in January? That just sounds miserable. The other guy was Cash and he was finishing up his hike–he did a northbound this year but missed a section due to an injury so he was making it up. After talking to him for a bit I discovered I’d actually met him back in Vermont–he’d passed along a message from Neon to me when we were trying to meet up to hike together. Small world. It was nice to meet two new people but they were going into town today so we’d be ahead of them at least for a while.

The rain let up and delta and I began hiking around ten or so. The highlight of the day was a climb up Dragon’s Tooth. This was a mountain with a big stone formation on top. You can climb this stone formation, named the Dragon’s Tooth, and see great views of the valley below. The climb up the mountain to it was one of the more difficult climbs in recent memory. It wasn’t terrible but it was actually nice for a change to have a challenge and really sweat it out going uphill. There was even some hand over foot climbing and metal rebar to climb, things we haven’t had since New Hampshire.
It was beautiful up top especially now that the clouds had cleared to reveal autumn blue skies. From Dragons Tooth, the walk to the shelter was mostly downhill and easy and we got to the shelter nice and early even with our late start this morning.

Miles today: 17.8
Total miles: 1480.2

As usual, we were slow to leave down, getting on the trail at 11am only after getting some nice “real” coffee. We left town with very full and heavy packs, carrying five days of food, the most I’ve carried in a very long time. It was a beautiful day out, in the mid 60s and on and off sun. But boy was the hiking stuff with my loaded pack. The miles seemed to drag on and I was sweating like crazy on each uphill. Our goal was to get to Mcafees Knob for sunset. Mcafees knob is a rock overhang overlooking the valley below and is apparently the most photographed spot on the AT according to our guide book. All day I kind of felt the pressure to keep moving to be absolutely sure I’d get there in time for sunset. Finally, Delta and I got there around 6pm. It was cloudy and there was no real sunset to see. The view was pretty, but we’d definitely overhyped it. The photos make it look cooler than it actually was. We enjoyed having a photoshoot for a while and then headed down the mountain 1.7 miles to the next shelter as it grew dark. At some point, we grew concerned we weren’t on the trail because we hadn’t seen any white blazes in a while. It was dark at this point so I really hoped we were going the right way. Finally we came to a sign and we discovered we’d somehow taken a different trail for about a mile but were now intersecting with the AT. crap. Delta refuses to skip even an inch of the trail so he headed back up to retrace the trail we’d missed. I don’t want to miss an inch of the AT and would never purposely skip a section but I figure if it was an honest mistake I’m not going to hold it against myself for missing a mile. I walked to the next shelter by the light of my headlamp and started making my dinner when I got there. As I looked for my spork to start eating I discovered I must’ve left it back at the hotel in Daleville–I couldn’t find it anywhere. Delta still wasn’t done hiking so I resorted to using triscuts as little spoons to eat my rice. I’d have to eat the “spoon” every so often as it grew soggy. This should be a fun couple of days trying to eat without a spork until I get to the next town.

Miles today: 11.2
Total miles: 1462.4

Our plan today was to hike to Daleville, resupply, then hike a few miles out of town and stealth camp somewhere. Then tomorrow we’d go by Mcafees Knob, the most photographed spot on the AT. Delta and I had talked about wanting to be at Mcafees knob for sunrise or sunset, but to do that we’d have to cut a day really short.

Anyway, the hike into Daleville was easy. Before we did any of our chores in town, we headed to get fast food for lunch… Obviously. As I was walking across the Bojangles parking lot I heard someone yell “are you a SOBO?” to me. I replied yes and discovered the girl and guy that had yelled to me were NOBOs that had finished their hike in September. The girl, Fun Size, asked “want some trail magic?” to which I obviously said yes. She said her and her boyfriend Bottlecap had gotten trail magic at this exact Bojangles on their hike. Bottlecap and Fun Size are from the area and were driving by and hoping to see Southbounders so they could pass the trail magic on. They bought Delta and me meals at bojangles and then sat chatting with us tellig us about all the cool stuff we have to look forward to on the trail. Meeting them was an unexpected great surprise.

After eating, I told Delta I’d thought about it and decided if he still wanted to stop early so we could get to Mcafees knob for sunset tomorrow I’d be fine with it. Originally I didn’t want to do another short day as I felt like we’ve been making slow progress lately. But I reminded myself that ill probably never get to see Mcafees knob again so i should see it at sunset if thats what id prefer. Plus doing a short day isn’t the end of the world. Delta was hapy to hear this and we decided to stay at a motel in town where we later found out 6 other SOBOs were staying! One of the six is a guy named hover job, who I haven’t seen since New Hampshire. He’s planning to throw a SOBO hobo bash AKA a Halloween party at a hostel coming up. I think there are so many sobos staying in town because they’re planning their hiking schedules around trying to get to the party on the right day. While the party sounds awesome, we’d have to basically take two days off hiking to make it so wed get to the hostel on the right day. I didn’t care enough about it to take that much time off and neither did delta, but it was nice to run into so many sobos because of the upcoming party. I met some new hikers I hadn’t seen yet–Slingshot and Sasquatch, two girls hiking together, and Fives, a guy from MN.

I kept pretty busy in town doing errands–walking to the post office, resupplying on food, and getting some warmer clothes at the outfitter. Another reason I was ok taking a short day today was that staying in town meant I’d get to watch the Red Sox! This would be game 2.5 I get to see (the half game beig when I just watched snippets with deltas family). I’d say that’s not bad for being in the woods managing to see that many games. Plus it was nice to just relax for an afternoon. Looking forward to Mcafees knob tomorrow.