I would walk 500 miles

6/5 Because of our 19 mile day the day before, we decided to take a zero day in Damascus as a reward. Luckily for us because that morning at about 7 it flat poured for about an hour. People hiking in that day were soaked! We resupplied, and stuffed ourselves at Pizza Plus. They have an all you can eat pizza and salad buffet for 7$. There were about 8 of us hikers there for about 2 hours. We even got to catch up with Geo Sandwich!! We snuck in a build your own 6 pack to the Hostel (you're not supposed to bring liquor in) and relaxed. 

Later we went to Damascus Brewery, met the brewer and sampled some fun named beers (like sweet beaver). The girls (Pickles and Skipper) even joined us! 

The next day we headed down main street on the trail. We stopped for cheap breakfast and coffee at a little place called Mojoes. The trail was washed out in a part so we joined the Virginia Creeper Trail (a reformed railway track now used for biking). 

Pretty area on the way to Mt. Rogers.

We still managed to hike 15.5 miles. The shelters are pretty nice in Virginia. Rob can actually stand up in them and not hit his head!
Day 49 we hit 500 miles!! 

We sort of summited Mt. Rogers (Virginia's highest peak. The first shelter we hit was a cool 2 floor shelter. The campgrounds were packed with people and boy scouts (it was a Saturday). I chatted with a couple who were section hiking and gave us food they weren't going to use. They also gave us their water, mostly cause the man wanted to go get more so he could play with his new steri-pen. We pushed on to the next shelter and past a herd of wild ponies. The ponies were really cool. Most of them politely ignore you like the cows. But one baby pony came Right up to us and tried to eat Rob's pocket. 

What's silly is that after we passed them there was a sign on the opposite side of the state park that said not to feed or pet them. Guess that's government for you.
Day 50 (6/8) dawned foggy, gloomy, and gray. We only had 5 miles between the next 2 shelters. Made it to the first one and the rain looked like it would hold off. We got about an hour into our walk to the 2nd shelter and the sky started drizzling. The drizzle turned into a full downpour in about 5 minutes. We got to the shelter soaked (you won that round, rain). Since the next shelter was 10 more miles, we decided to call it a day and try to dry things out. We figured we'd hydrate and push the next day to the Partnership Shelter where we could order pizza right to the trail.

We had a very restless sleep in the shelter that night. Something big sounding woke us up crashing through the branches. And then there was an eerie flapping noise that accompanied it. The big sounding thing we never determined what it was, but the flapping was a nocturnal social group of birds that were nesting in all the eaves of the shelter. They were flying back and forth all night long.

In the morning we set off on our 2nd 20 mile hike. We passed through a cow pasture with no cows but lots of cowpies. We came across some amazing trail magic when we were getting ready to take our second break. A church group had a permanent box stuffed with Hiker needs! Ramen, crackers, sodas, treats, a first aid box and even a box marked 'lady items'. It was all set up under a canopy and there were chairs. Truly incredible!!

We made it to the Partnership shelter a few hours later and took a shower (there was one at the shelter)!!! The shelter is right by Mt. Rogers visitor center (even though we passed Mt Rogers 2 days ago). We used the phone and ordered pizza (there's only 2 places on the trail where you can do this). So after gorging ourselves on greasy, cheesy, happiness,(other people at the shelter ordered pizza too), we retired to the 2nd floor of the shelter.

The road to Virginia

So at the Mountain Harbuor Hostel we met the 60+ Hostel caretaker Vagabond! 

The front of Mountain Harbor Hostel

View from the porch

Amazing lady!! Had thru hiked just last year. She was incredible to talk to! We had a big comfy king bed to sleep in, she did our laundry and told us about the Holy Cow burger we had to get when we went to town. In town, we saw this burger and had to get it for 10$. 

It was 3 5oz beef patties, 6 slices of bacon, 5 slices of cheese, 2 pieces of ham, 2 onion rings, a cup of chili and all the regular fixings. We shared it even though Rob could have eaten it on his own. And we spent the night at the Hostel watching Jurassic Park and Braveheart and organizing our food bags. It is by far one of the nicest, cleanest, well run hostels we've been to on the trail!
The next day, we hiked through soggy, swampy mess that was more like the Louisiana bayou than Tennessee.  

Rob's 400 mile face

We hit our 400 mile mark and thanks to the terrain, banged out 15 miles. We took a break at a bench with a beautiful view. 

We misread the map, missed our campsite but then made our own campsite by a stream. I was also startled by a 3ft long black shiny stick which happened to be a rat snake.
Day 43 (6/1) dawned after a not so even night's sleep. The ground of our campsite was not quite level. We hiked by 'hardcore cascades' seriously that's what it said in the trail guide book.. 

Yeah they didn't seem very "hardcore" to us either

We did 15.5 miles on some not very nice terrain and a rough 1700ft upward hike at the end of our day. We hiked past Laurel Falls with lots of day hikers around. 

A little kid saw our packs and asked his mom why we were carrying so much stuff. She told him we were hiking a long journey. He asked 'don't they have homes?' Rob and I just giggled and said 'not really'. We camped at a nice flat campsite called Pond Flats with a lame water source and were all alone until some kid joined us. It was cool till he spent 3+ hours talking on his cell phone well past 8pm (well known 'Hiker midnight' and bedtime dammit!!). Just rude!
The next day we knew we had a decent hike around Watauga Lake. We had been warned by many people not to camp around the lake or at the first shelter because of the bears. People have been leaving trash and all kinds of crap around so yeah.. Lots of bears.. We took a break by the lake and saw ducks and Canadian geese with their babies. We stayed at Vandevetter shelter (mile 434.5) that night with quite a few people (Spider caught up with us. Yay! Sadly Tramp and Bear got off the trail) and a nice sized fire for bear deterrent. In the middle of the night Rob 'made it rain'. I woke up to a credit card stuck to my chest. Then flipped over awhile later to find a few more. In the morning he asked 'where's my cash?' Apparently it all fell out of his pocket during the night. His cash was under lock and key under my butt as I slept.

Day 45 (holy sh*t it's actually been a month and a half!!) We did a quick 6 miles to the next shelter to try to beat the rain (I get signal so we can check weather reports). We had to stop at this crappy spring to get water and of course that's when it started coming down, but it didn't help the for of the spring. We waited at the shelter for about 2 hours to wait out the worst of the rain. (For all you desert-dwellers hiking soaking wet sucks! This is the humid south, man.. You never dry out!! If you can stay dry, you try to!!) We got some amazing, unexpected trail magic from 3rd to 6th grade girls mission group from a Baptist Church. It was so sweet! Their metal box is obviously a permanent thing, it's bolted to the ground. 

Rob dug to the bottom of the cooler of iced drinks and found me a Dr. Perky (a Dr. Pepper knockoff). We've been hiking on and off with a couple from New York who we've called the 'Smiley Face Bandits' on account of they draw smiley faces in the dirt on the trail. For no other purpose than to make themselves laugh and brighten other hikers' day. They were having a snack with us and the 'Dr. Perky' just turned into a big joke. As we walked on, we came to a giant field, had to climb over a barbed wire fence (yes still on the trail) and walked into a cow pie minefield. Our silly friends had drawn a smiley face into one of the cowpies and had earlier written Dr. Perky in the dirt. Needless to say there were lots of giggles on this part of the hike. The cows were grazing and paid no attention to us whatsoever.. We hit Double Springs Shelter right after that which took us all by surprise. We thought we had longer (and another steep uphill climb to go). It rained throughout the night but at least we were dry!
6/4 the day dawned foggy and gloomy must have been why Rob slept in till 7 and I got to sleep in till 8. We had a symphony of owls keeping the mice at bay last night. Saw them running along the edges of the shelter, but the owls were around and making their presence known. A look at the weather report told us that we were going to have really ugly thunderstorms starting at 1pm and continuing through the night. Bummer, we were hoping to camp closer to Damascus, VA rather than seek the safety of the shelter at 8.5 miles. But after a quick (it took us about 3 hours)  8.5 miles to the shelter, the sun was still out and clouds were big and fluffy. 1pm seemed like such an early time to end the day so we talked and decided we would press on the next 10 miles to Damascus! 

Yay state line!!! 4th state! 

Our Virginia welcoming committee. He was right under the sign. 

We crossed the Tennessee/Virginia state line (freaking finally!!!) and 4 hours later we rolled into town (another town where the actual trail goes right down main street). 

We grabbed a room at a Hostel (which we didn't pay attention had sperate beds but at least we had a private room), took a much needed shower, and dropped our clothes off to get laundered. We had a few beers and Rob ate a ginormous burger (it was a lb of ground beef and easily 3/4lb of bacon and ham on it). 

Tomorrow is a nice zero day with resupply and pizza and beer.

I've added pictures to the last 3 blogs as well. If you've already read them, yay now they have pretty things to look at too!! 

"The Fellowship of the Wine"

So on Memorial Day we were heading in the 6 miles to Erwin. We stayed at Uncle Johnny's-nickel-and-dime-you-bedbug-infested-shank-you-with-a-toenail Hostel. 

Sign out in front of Uncle Johnny's. Good to know Katahdin isn't too far! 

Our outhouse sized room had a private bed but one window didn't have blinds and we found a full beer under the bed with cobwebs. The only good thing was there were multiple shuttles into town so we could eat at a pizza buffet and then later resupply at Walmart (we even hit a liquor store).  We sat around that night drinking beer and whiskey and laughing with Trillium, Brian, Ryan, and Mike. Mike informed us that he bought 2 boxes of wine to carry up the next few days for the remainder of their hike. Ryan almost got shanked by a toenail of a grisly lady (we think.. Not entirely positive) Hiker who stood on the table to turn up her music. I guess she didn't like ours. It was kind of decided that we were all going to hike together.
The next morning we all set off to head to a random campsite about 13.5 miles away. We had thunder clouds circling around us but they were all mouth no trousers. We got some awesome trail magic from a Catholic Priest (BT) and onward we went to the campsite, Mike carrying 55# worth of pack and wine. While we were hiking, we were hiking in a single file line, cracking the jokes about looking like Lord of the Rings. When we got to camp we all assisted Winebag with lightening his load. Hey we all know it's not the best wine but when you're out in the mountains, it's pretty nice!! 

Onward and upward the next day for some rough elevation gain. Rob and I saw a white tailed deer that morning. 

We had to walk through a 'dense spruce forest' and the fog had rolled in. It made for a cool picture! 

We lost Mike somewhere on the trail only to have him turn up at the shelter ahead of us with stories of a 17 mile day and a half mile hitchhike. We got trail magic again from Rob Bird former owner of the Birdcage hostel. Super nice guy! 

Rob Bird's AT trail magic van! 

I built a fire and more people showed up and kind of took it over to make it a raging bonfire. More wine and off to bed!!!

5/29 - Up and over Roan Mountain where crews were putting in brand new switchbacks (which we later found added 2.something miles to our hike for the day) and we all had lunch at the Roan Mountain picnic area which had bathrooms with running water!! It's kind of funny that somewhere some jackass was complaining about his Starbucks drink and us 5 adults were SUPER excited about running water and soap!! After all the people that have walked the trail, it was cool to think that we were some of the first feet on that part of the trail. 

The clouds were starting to come in overhead and instead of going the extra 2 miles to a coverted barn shelter, the 5 of us spent the night at a smaller shelter, Stan Murray shelter. Luckily it didn't start raining until about 10 minutes right before we got to the shelter! We finished off the rest of the wine, shared food and whiskey and made the most of 'The Fellowship's' last night on the trail. (Brian, Ryan and Mike were leaving the next day). Ryan and I giggled our asses off at Brian's attempts to hang the food bags and successfully knock Rob's off the branch and pull the branch down from the weight. 

The next day, we had a guest at breakfast. A (we think) barn owl flew down and perched. It sat long enough for us to look and take pictures.

Then we were off, we hiked 0.3 miles off the trail to the converted barn and were slightly disappointed in ourselves that we didn't push to it. It says it holds 20 but could easily sleep 60 people. The views were incredible! We also finally caught up to the girls (Pickles and Skipper)! It was wonderful to see them and hug them and the puppies!

The view from the barn sleeping area

There was a ladder leading up to the top floor which was the main sleeping area

Sign explaining the barn's purpose from the revolutionary war and it's importance to the trail. (Hard to read I know)

Views of the barn from the mountains

The Appalachian Trail symbol on the top of the Mountain. 

Pictures from the top of Hump Mountain

Finally leaving North Carolina!!! 

Then we hiked up Hump Mountain and little Hump (both were huge humps). We stopped on the top to admire the views and take a trekking pole selfie of the 5 of us. Then we hiked down an ankle and foot killing rocky 3 miles to the Mountain Harbour Hostel (where their car was and we decided we would spend the night). The trio took showers before heading out (probably a good thing cause I'm pretty sure Ryan would have stuffed Brian in the trunk for their drive home). We bid farewell to them but we will see them soon when we get to Northern Virginia! We might actually get to drink wine out of real bottles together!!