It’s been two full weeks since the last zero day all the way back in Hot Springs and still going strong. With so many of the town stops featuring hostels with only bunkrooms (only a small upgrade from the trail) I’m planning on waiting to take the next zero somewhere with a real hotel. So while Damascus didn’t really tempt me with a zero it was a nice little trail town. Two things it had in abundance were churches and bike shops. When I was on the way through the far side of town and back to the trail I found out why there were so many bikes: theres another major trail running through Damascus, the Virginia Creeper trail. I don’t know how long it is, but its a nice bicycle path, all gravel and dirt, but smoothly graded. Twice during the day the AT actually joined with the Creeper for a few tenths of a mile. The first merging was temporary, the result of a washed out bridge on the AT and resulting detour. The second was longer and a permanent part of the AT.
The first day in Virginia was uneventful; mostly a prelude to the Grayson Highlands section that begins tomorrow. There were a couple good climbs today, two of which many AT hikers skip by staying on the Creeper trail for 10 miles instead of going up and down the mountains the AT takes you over. As usual I found the most beautiful parts of the forest today to be the higher elevation ones. Towards the end of the day there was lots of flowing water along the trail, rocks and logs were covered in thick moss, the canopy and undergrowth were dense; even though the sun was out the trail was very dark.
There were quite a few perfect camp spots in the immediate vicinity of the shelter tonight and quite a few hikers at the shelter so I’m tenting. There was still room left inside, but I’m starting to like the idea of tenting more often for a little more privacy and quiet. There’s a group of three middle aged guys here section hiking and they are absolutely loaded with stories about their previous trips and apparently like nothing better than sharing them endlessly. They’ve been doing random hikes all along the east coast for 20 years, and they had some good stories, such as when someone they were with had chaffed legs and mistakenly rubbed hand sanitizer all over the raw skin. They’ve been at it for almost three hours now though.
Before I left Damascus I made another change in my gear/pack – I got rid of my water bladder and hose and replaced it with a second Nalgene bottle. I had been carrying to much water, often not refilling at all during the day even though I’d pass six to ten or more water sources. Also, when the bladder did need filling It requires almost totally unloading the backpack to access it, and it was hard to tell how much water was left until it was empty. Now I can carry two liters, down from four, but it’s all outside my pack. No hose means I have to stop to drink, but there’s something nice about gulping down huge mouthfuls out of a wide bottle anyway. Many former thru-hikers online said they made the same move during their hike, I always thought that having a hose would be irreplaceable even after reading their comments, but now bottles seem like the way to go. One day down, don’t regret it yet.