Date: 2013-05-08
From: Iron Horse Cabin

To: Damascus 
Miles today: 18.9

Everything was super wet so I was glad I had on my rain pants. I passed piles of throw-up and Diarrhea almost directly on the trail. I saw them because my dog thought they were fun to sniff. I hoped it wasn't norovirus infected. I saw my mom through the fog up ahead. She had hiked a little bit south to meet me. We continued on in the foggy rainy weather. We stopped to eat a snack and I pulled out a honey bun. My dog stared at me every single bite, I did give her a tiny piece.   We crossed a road and came upon the emergency shelter. We thought it was the normal shelter at first and thought no was were we here already. It was called the love shack and was a platform for 2 people with 2 ft of open space all the way around it to the walls. The opening was short and I hit my head on it more than once. We continued on stopping to have lunch at the real shelter. It started raining for real but I was excited because from here it was 10 miles to Damascus and only 7 miles to the TN/VA border my home state. My mom and I squished and slipped our way down the now super muddy trail. I fell hard and hit my knee. My dog stood close as I lay there tears welling up in my eyes. I took a deep breath and after a moment got up and took a few gentle steps and kept going . I soon saw a sign and knew it must be the border. I bounced over to it and quickly hopped to the other side. WOOHOO! I'd made it to Virginia completing 3 states already! Now I'd be close to home for a couple hundred miles. My mom tried taking my picture next to the sing but it was so foggy and raining that the picture wouldn't come out. I put in on underwater setting and it looked much better. We hiked on excited to be in Va but sad it was drizzle and muddy. I hoped others who came through today had a good first impression of my state. Bailey could sense our excitement and was eager to get down the trail. We spilled out of the woods onto a residential street, followed the white blazes through the park, own the main road and to my moms car. We were wet tired and getting hungry so we weren't quite sure what to do first. The places in town were full and I wanted a bead and hot shower. A guy suggested Iron horse campground and cabins down the road. We drive around and enter a not well maintainer area with a rundown closed restaurant, nice little cabins and a few RV's. We finally found a person and asked where /who ran this place and were pointed to an RV. I knocked on the door and was told to come in by a man and woman. I told her I wanted a cabin and she said it was $35. I paid and she wrote me a receipt and showed my mom and I to our tiny cabin. It was a big enough for 2 twin beds with a nightstand between them and 3 feet at the end of the beds. The bathroom was a few feet away and showers across the way. There were actually several tiny cabins lined up on a platform all looking out to the river. It could've been a real nice place if they knew how to run a business better. I fed Bailey and left here there while my mom and I went back to town to get dinner. We went to the Blue Blaze Cafe and I ordered a Philly cheese steak and chocolate milk and my mom ordered a meat lovers pizza and garlic knots. My sub came first and then a pizza with peperoni and black olives. We dug in before we realized it was the wrong pizza, they let us keep it and then brought out the garlic knots and the right pizza. I wanted desert but I was to full after having an 8 inch sub, 2 slices of pizza and 2 garlic knots and 12 oz of choc milk. We figured we would be back for breakfast in the morning and we'd get dessert then. As we settled into our cabin for the night I pulled my blankets up and realized they were dusty. This place wasn't the cleanest but it was alright, I was in a bed. I would get a shower in the morning. My dad had been planning on joining me for trail days which was in 8 days so I figured why not go home for a week? Once I got my dog it would be hard to get home and here my mom was going home and my dad coming back in a week. I wanted to see my brand new baby niece really bad and I would get to go to my cousin's high school graduation. The timing was just perfect so the plan was to leave in the morning after breakfast. I get up early and went to go take a shower but it was really moldy and stinky. Now for me, a thru hiker to decline a shower means that it's gotta be pretty bad. I was really bummed that I wasn't going to get a shower before the 8 hr car ride home but there was no way I could even rinse off for a minute in that place. We went back to Blue Blaze Cafe and my mom ordered a slice of carrot cake while I got eggs sausage and a pancake. Now this slice of cake was huge!! It was 4 layers tall and about 5 inches wide,. I helped her eat it of course and we still didn't finish it. I'm not typically a fan of carrot cake but this one was moist and had good icing. My breakfast was fairly good but then...I ordered a bacon brownie, sundae. It was a 6 inch by 4 inch brownie with 4 strips of crunchy bacon on top next to 2 hearty scoops of vanilla ice cream. Mmmm was it good! I ate all the ice cream and half the bacon brownie saving it for later. My mom and I walked out of the cafe, full and happy. We wandered around the outfitters, digesting a bit so we could actually fit into the car. We left Damascus around 9:30.