Day 52: High Class Hikers

Hiked 0.0 miles, staying at Auntie's Cottage in Damascus.

Like any morning following a late evening of shenanigans I woke up craving a big breakfast.  The gas station down the road, Cowboy's, doubles as diner and I had a great five dollar breakfast of eggs, bacon and biscuits'n'gravy.  They were already mobbed, it is going to be crazy here tomorrow I think.

Dip'n'sip is training for his retirement

We walked around a ton this morning and explored the festival.  We all got a bunch of swag from vendors.  I am sending home my winter gear this weekend anyway so anything I pick up I can just add to that.  There is a group of ladies from a Baptist church that is about 8 hours away from Damascus that every year knit a ton of wool caps for the hikers and drive down here to give them out along with hot coffee and we all got one.  You can see Dip'n'sip in the above picture wearing his with pride.  There is a group of vendors that will do free gear repair on any products including brands not their own so I dropped off my hiking poles to get new tips put on and I might go back at some point to fix some holes that have developed in the mesh of one wall of my tent.  My shoes are getting close to being beyond repair so I won't waste their time with that.

Hikers relaxing on the school steps during the reception

Gene Espy speaking about his thru hike

They had a big reception and lunch for the hikers going on at the local elementary school and we headed over there.  After lunch Gene Espy, the second thru hiker to ever hike the trail gave a talk.  He hiked it after he got back from World War II and was very interesting to listen to.  Unfortunately given his age he doesn't project very well when he spoke and they didn't have a microphone so I was only able to catch about half of what he said.

Dip'n'sip's wife Yolanda arrived in late morning and we headed over to the Auntie's Cottage where we will be staying for the next few days.  Their friends that were originally going to join them changed their minds last minute and as a result we now have two beds and a couch at the disposal of Why Not, Srocket and I so nobody has to sleep on the floor!  The cottage is really nice and is right next to the park and only a hop skip and a jump from Tent City so the location is great.

Late in the day Why Not and I headed to the post office to pick up packages.  My mother made and sent me some brownies which were delicious, thanks mom!  On the way back we stopped by one of the booths in the park that has a large map of the whole trail up.  On this board hikers put a little sticky with their name on it in their current location.  It is fun to look at it and see where everyone is that you have met but haven't seen for a while.  It is only the first day so the board hasn't filled up much yet, but already you can tell that the main bubbles (of people that came back for Trail Days) appear to be around Damascus, Pearisburg, Daleville, mostly because these are the three easiest places to get off the trail to come back here.

In the afternoon we started getting quite a bit of rain and unfortunately a lot of the live outdoor music got cancelled.  Thanks to Yolanda we have a car at our disposal and a kitchen at the cottage so we combined both to get groceries and make an awesome home cooked dinner.  Rocket joined us and the six of us had some beers and hung out.  We are trying to get Rocket to change his trail name to Rusty to keep things less confusing between him and Srocket, we shall see.  Given the rain and how late we stayed up last night we lost steam and never made it back to tent city tonight.  Instead Rocket (Rusty), Srocket and I played cards for a while and then passed out.

We definitely spoiled ourselves today: big home cooked meal, wine for dinner, fancy cottage to stay in with a queen bed for each person (and a comfy couch).  I feel so upper class compared to the average thru hiker.  I can see why a lot of hikers don't make it back onto the trail after a long town stay.  Me I think I appreciate these things so much more when they become a luxury like this.  We certainly have had a lot of zeros in a row though, me I'm ready to put some serious miles in after Damascus and I think the other three in our hiking group feel the same.