GET - AT Hike

So there we were, Andy & I, doing our laundry at the laundromat when, who walks in?  Our buddy Sharkey from the Twinkle Toes Yellow Shoelaces club who had gotten off the trail to travel in Egypt with his girlfriend Tammie.  Surprise!  They had just returned from their travels on Sunday and were ready to treat us to a stay at their home near Waynesboro.  Sharkey also had Bogey & Slim and Danger Danjo signed up for a night at the Sharkey Ranch.  It didn’t take too much convincing to get us to jump on the band wagon and stay another night in town with such good company!

Sharkey drove us around to the places we wanted to go - Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and the local outfitters store (typical hiker stuff, eh?) - and then took us to his lovely home in Rockfish Valley, about a mile from the ridge the AT traverses.  He has chickens, a rabbit, two cats, a dog, and a big Python snake called Pooh!  He took Pooh out for a ‘walk’ and a wash, and then we watched him feed him a live chicken.  It was fascinating.  We spent the afternoon catching up and hanging out, even trying Sharkey’s new hookah he brought back from Egypt.  At dusk we saw about 12 deer come down from the woods into the fields behind his house, and later heard some foxes barking.

We slept well and awoke this morning to a feast of whole-wheat walnut waffles, orange juice, coffee, watermelon, and fresh eggs from his chickens.  It was a feast!  And we ate it all.  Well fed, Andy & I are lounging around waiting for Andy’s replacement Mountain Hardwear backpack to arrive and then we will head back out on the trail!  

So many thanks to Sharkey & Tammie - you treated us like kings! 

Hello all!

It’s been awhile since our last update! We’ve been going through some remote areas of the state, putting mile after big mile behind us on our way to Maine. We’ve now made it a bit over 800 miles and are taking a rainy day off in Waynesboro, VA, just south of Shenandoah National Park.

Pearisburg, VA to Catawba, VA

We took awhile to drag ourselves out of town and felt the need to stop and eat a big meal at Hardee’s before we left. So we all felt sick as dogs as we climbed up to the ridge out of Pearisburg. But we were rewarded with a beautiful shelter site at the top called Rice Field. Virginia, we have found, is most definitely not flat. A typical day involves hiking up 1500 feet to a ridge in a mile or so, then hiking along that ridge for 10 miles of short ups and downs, then hiking 1500 feet back down the ridge to a creek or river, then doing the whole thing over again. So that’s what we did, day in and out, for about a week and a half or so. We hiked through some more farmland, got soaked in the biggest downpour yet (with hail), met some donkeys, forded a creek, crossed the Eastern Continental Divide, climbed up on the Dragon’s Tooth (a big rock jutting out of the top of a mountain), and taught Corley how to scale big ladders.

Catawba, VA to Daleville, VA

Andy’s good buddy Sean and his girlfriend Caroline came up to meet us in Catawba, VA to hike with us for a few days. I think the few days they were with us were our “vacation” from real trail life. Sean made us breakfast burritos, coffee with Kahlua and cream and carried some wine and bourbon on the trail for us to have with dinner. We got to see some great AT views with them, including McAfee’s Knob and the Tinker Cliffs. Now it’s notorious for it to rain anytime we have friends come hike with us, but luckily we made it to a shelter before the rain came. And we were the only ones in the shelter so we spread out, made dinner and listened to some music and news on Superchunk’s radio. During dinner, eight deer snuck up behind the shelter and surprised us - all I saw was a bunch of white tails bounding up the hill, but Andy says that they were big ones! We made it into Daleville the next day where we had Caroline’s vehicle waiting to take us to Trail Days. After a wonderful dinner at the local Mexican restaurant, thanks to the very generous Charlene, we piled in the truck and headed back south toward Damascus.

Trail Days

Trail Days is an annual gathering of hikers to celebrate the Appalachian Trail - and it is BIG! We arrived late on Friday night to snag the last parking spot near “Tent City”, where all the hikers pitch their portable nylon homes. It was like a big reunion, we saw lots of our friends that had gotten ahead of us or behind us on the trail, like Gucci & Bearfoott, Bahama Dave, Grasshopper, and Mango & Cannuk. There was a big bonfire and live music with dancing. The weather was great all weekend, which was a blessing, and roamed around town looking at all the outdoor gear and food vendors all day Saturday. We got to see our buddy Chris Hall with LEKI trekking poles, who had generously donated our poles to us for our journey. LEKI set up shop and did maintance on any set of trekking poles the hikers needed - it was great! We picked up our packages and letters so thanks a million to HAT, Dan & Kreis, Deputy Dan, Mindy, and Pam for the mail and goodies!!! Andy and I spent lots of time re-outfitting ourselves with summer gear and we are happy as pigs in poop with our lighter backpacks. We also hiked in the “Hiker Parade” through town where tradition has it the townsfolk and bystanders soak thru-hikers with water balloons, water guns, and other creative means of getting large amounts of water onto the hikers! Sunday morning we packed up and headed back up the interstate to get back on the trail. We said a sad goodbye to Sean, Caroline & his dog Dolly in Daleville and spent the night in a hotel room due to pending rain.

Daleville, VA to Waynesboro, VA

We headed back out on the trail Monday after Trail Days around one, and it felt good to get back into the simple lives we lead in the woods. The weather was beautiful again and found a nice camping spot beside Curry Creek to stay for the night. The next morning we headed out early and about a half-mile before Wilson Creek Shelter Andy rounded a switchback to see a big black bear! Luckily it had heard him first and was headed away from him as fast as it could. Spring has sprung and we are now hiking through beautiful tunnels of green, keeping cool under a canopy of leaves. The rhododendron and mountain laurel are blooming, along with many different wildflowers. This section of Virginia has been beautiful, with long slow climbs and vast views. We climbed the easy way up The Priest mountain, then went the hard way down to the Tye River only to go the hard way up the Three Ridges mountain and the easy way down into Rockfish Gap/Waynesboro. This memorial day weekend was beautiful so the trail was packed with people hiking, and people dishing out “trail magic”. We got five different trail magics in one day, including bacon cheeseburgers and sodas in Hog Pen Gap!! We met “The Runner”, a trail runner who has run the AT and the PCT and is off to run the CDT in 70 days this summer (read more at www.eco-xsports.com). We’re also getting into tick season and Battle Tick has already begun - I’ve had 4 so far, Andy has had 2, and we lost count for Corley. The AT has been crossing the Blue Ridge Parkway on and off for the past hundred miles, which has given us much more of a sense of civilization (yay for trash cans at overlooks!).

Now we’re looking forward to the Shenandoah National Park and getting out of Virginia into Maryland in the next two weeks! Special thanks go out to Mr & Mrs Caveman, Head/Shoulders/Knees/Gypsy Toes, and David Horton for the trail magic, ATC ridge runner Mike for the ride to town, and Heather Anne/Dan/Kreis, Deputy Dan & Mindy for the packages!!

much love to all!

susan, andy & corley

Hello from Pearisburg, VA!

We’ve fast-forwarded a day and a half to this small town near the West Virginia border because of some interesting events that transpired in the past day.  We got up early today to hike the 7 miles to a small grocery store 1/2 mile from the trail to get breakfast and enough food to get us to Pearisburg then next night.  When we got to the road there was yellow police tape across the trail and a giant road sign that said “Trail closed to Pearisburg”.  Confused, we hiked the 1/2 mile to the grocery store and found out that there had been two non-fatal shootings the night before about 3 miles up the trail from that road.  Apparantly a man who killed two thru-hikers in 1981 and served 20 years returned to nearly the exact spot near the trail (not actually on the AT) and shot two fishermen then stole their car, but was apprehended after a police chase and is now in custody.  The fishermen hiked 3 miles out of the woods to a house where they were soon air-lifted to a hospital in Roanoke.  The law enforcement officers were not sure when the trail would re-open - it could be tomorrow, it could be a month - so we got a ride with a local man who owned a school bus into Pearisburg to stay the night.  Tomorrow we’ll hike north out of town and return to do the 27 mile section later on.

Other than that, we’ve been having a great time since Damascus!  We hiked in the Mount Rogers Wilderness, through a snow-covered mountain trail, and the rocky Grayson Highlands.  We’ve been hiking with our buddy Nate, aka Superchunk, for a week or so since his other two buddies got ahead of him.  We stayed at Partnership shelter, which is so close to a highway to town that we ordered pizza and cokes delivered right to the shelter!  We crossed I-81, ate a super hiker breakfast at restaurant called “The Barn” - 2 eggs, 2 slices of bacon, 2 sausage patties, two slices of toast, two pancakes, sweet tea/coffee, and the boys added biscuits and gravy.  WHEW!  Let me tell you, we were s l o w up that hill.  I think we actually only made it about 5 miles past the highway before we set up our tents for the night! 

We had heard the Virginia was flat and easy, but so far it has proven to still be pretty hilly!  We’ve been walking through a good bit of farm land, which involves climbing over a bunch of ladders over fences and stepping around cow poop.  We climbed over one ladder right into a bunch of cows - Corley wasn’t sure what to do!  The other wildlife we have seen that was cool was in the Grayson Highlands - they have wild ponies!  They’re not afraid of humans, on the contrary, they walked up to us and wanted food.  One tried to eat my camera bag that was attached to my hip belt and left me with some partially chewed grass when he found out it wasn’t edible!

Next week Andy’s buddies Sean & Caroline are coming up to hike with us and bring us back to Damascus for Trail Days, a celebration of the AT that includes a parade, food & all the gear manufacturers set up with their tents to help you with your broken gear.  After that it’ll be back to hiking through some of the more remote parts of Virginia and hopefully soon enough into the Shenandoah National Park where we hear there are hot dog stands fairly often near the trail.  Yum!

Feel free to send us goodies in the mail, letters are always good too!  We’ll update our mail drops as soon as we figure out the next “big” town we’ll come to in VA.  Until then, have fun in the real world and hope to hear from y’all soon!

much love,

susan, andy & corley

ps. I’ve uploaded a bunch of photos from Virginia.  Enjoy!