Date: 2007-05-16
From: tenting at The Place, Damascus, Va

To: tenting at The Place, Damascus, Va
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

No rain yet. Pleasantly cool, lots of wind and clouds scurrying across the sky. Weather reports say it'll rain either today or tomorrow, then turn sunny for Friday and Saturday. We walked over to Cowboy's diner for Fred's breakfast of egg sandwich, cinnamon bun and coffee, and my egg biscuit, apple turnover, and Dr. Pepper. I mailed a birthday card to Marianne at the post offce this morning as she'll be 25 years old on the 21st. Then took another shower--bliss!!Wolfhound came over to visit and we walked back with him to the Montgomery's B&B where he's staying with Leatherneck. The B&B is an attractive home and looks so luxuriously comfortable. We weighed ourselves on the scales kept on the front porch. Fred weighs 174 lbs.(yippee, he's lost the weight he wanted to lose!), and I weigh 112 lbs.(means I've lost about 6 lbs.-I'm gonna be eating more now we'll be going to daily cookouts and eating home cooking, too). I'm sitting in the public library here posting this entry. The library generously has 5 computers available for public use(timed seating with a waitlist). With more and more hikers streaming into town, I'm not sure I'll be able to post daily. Our current plans are to hit the trail on Sunday, getting off at either Troutdale or Marion(5-6 days north of here). We'll be hiking over a highlands area where there are wild ponies(they'll walk up to you looking for handouts) and panoramic vistas, so we've heard. Oh, thinking of beautiful sights, I didn't report on Laurel Falls hiking of several days ago adequately. Laurel Falls plummet down into a deep stony gorge, which of course meant we hiked down boulder "steps" into the gorge, and later scrambled up boulders to proceed up the trail leading out of the gorge. The falls become a full, raging wide stream, with numerous campsites scattered along the shoreline that whips around the twists and turns of the mountain. The sounds, smells, and views were amazing. Beaver work the entire area; lots of trees nibbled thru and fallen, and lodges built here and there. Eventually, ya'll will be able to see the picutres Fred's been taking during our hike. We began uploading them at the Super 8 in Erwin, Tenn. days and days ago, but that computer completely broke(you no doubt noticed that all of my typing from that computer was run-on...the space bar key only worked sporatically)right after putting up 2 pics. Here at the Damascus library they ask that memory chips from digital cameras not be hooked into the computers. So we're unable to show you some of the trail people, places, wildlife, and things. I'm gonna ask around and see if there's another computer in town we can use to upload pics. If you don't see another posting before Sunday morning, figure we've gone hiking again and will probablyl be off the trail around May 26th or so. Hopefully, it'll work out that Linda and Dickie(Fred's sister and brother-in-law) will pick us up since the rd we'll come out on is not too, too far from the vicinity of their second home in Galax. If all goes well on their end, they'll be bringing up Fred's car to their Galax home so we'll have it handy to drive home. If I've mentioned all of this before in my journals, so sorry to be repetitive. Time on the computer is so short that I can't look up past entries to see what I have or haven't said. And in case you've emailed my regular email acct , I haven't had the time at a computer to look at that for wks! Hope all is well with everyone and everything. Happy trails!