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!!