Date: 2003-04-20
To: DAMASCUS!!!
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: broken clouds

Happy Easter everyone!!! We have arrived in THE ultimate trail town on the entire A.T. - Damascus, Virginia!! 460 miles are now behind us and we have had a great week from Erwin to here. This past week we have pushed hard on the feetsies - hiking about 115 miles in a week - that's an average of about 16 miles a day for you math-minded folks. Here are a few of the highlights....As the snow and rain started to clear, we headed out of Erwin, TN and headed for another 6,000-plus foot peak - Roan Mountain. It was another tough climb, and one that we happened to start up at about 3 pm. Note to self and others....don't start a big climb at the end of the day if you can avoid it! But, we REALLY wanted to get this mountain out of the way and not have to think about it overnight. The climb up was in about a foot of snow and ice, and the shelter at the top of the mountain (known to be the coldest place on the southern AT) lived up to its name. Roan Mountain Shelter sat at 6,100 feet, and we wanted to say that we slept at the highest shelter on the trail...so we slept on the second floor of the old fire warden's cabin/shelter!As we descended from Roan the next morning, we went from hats and gloves and snow to warm sunshine and short sleeves and sweat. The last several days have been beautiful - spring is definitely in the air, and the stench factor has increased. Dogwood trees and all kinds of flowers are popping up everywhere, and so are allergies for many hikers. We have climbed over several balds that provided 360 degree views that were amazing, and have layed in grassy fields in the sun for 2 hour lunches.On Wednesday, April 17 we arrived at Kincora Hostel (Kincora is a Celtic word for kinship of the heart), an amazing place with a great host - Bob Peoples is a great guy with tons of knowledge and hiking history. It was such a neat place, that we stayed for 3 nights and did some hiking out of his place. We have done 2 more days of slackpacking - or as some others call it - freedom hiking. For Yvonne and I, this hike is about us making the journey, not necessarily us and our full packs the whole way. Not having the full pack does help you to relax and enjoy the trail a little more sometimes, and that we did. We encountered gorgeous waterfalls and had time to play and enjoy the time with Fly By Night and Smooth Navigator (aka Heather and Andy), who we have been hiking with since Erwin (and off and on since Georgia). Doing the slackpack allowed us to do a 19 mile day on Friday, getting us ready to make the big push to arrive here in Damascus for Easter.Yesterday we started hiking at 8:30 am, aiming to make it the 22 miles into Damascus by nightfall. 4 of us hiking together helped to keep the motivation level high. We crossed the state line from Tennessee to Virginia at 6 pm and we hiked into town at 7:30 pm...exhausted and hobbling, but very happy to have made it. There are many hikers who make this kind of mileage every day, and I am not sure how they do it. Not for us....YET.Damascus is a wonderful little town, extremely friendly to hikers and a great place to spend the Easter weekend. We are enjoying the day off, complete with free turkey dinner and all the fixings at a local cafe, and plan to rest the feet and bodies before we head out tomorrow. Another state down and a big milestone to have made it this far. We feel very lucky and are thankful for all the support we have received from friends, family and complete strangers - we couldn't be doing this without you.We will be getting off the trail next week to start getting ready for Carol's canoe race - Just Add Water will be competing in the 70-mile canoe race in New York. We know this will be a challenge to leave the trail and come back, but we have a plan to keep up the trail conditioning and will be back hiking right after the race on Memorial Day! We have the determination to finish this thing and are looking forward to getting back to our home in the woods. Look for more updates as we go...Next stop will be next weekend, north of Grayson Highlands park, where there is a shelter on the trail that you can actually order out pizza from! A very enticing idea for us hikers who never stop thinking about food...Until then, take care and we will see some of you soon!!P.S. - A RANDOM trail story that we forgot to mention from Hot Springs!!!! We left Hot Springs and were crossing the river on a road as a van approached us, going the opposite direction - and the driver was our friend Remi, who we have not actually seen for several years!!! She was working, had a school group in the van that she was taking rafting and if we had crossed the bridge minutes before or after, we would not have seen her!!! How uplifting it is to run into somebody that you know when you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere!! It was great to see her, we just wish that we could have spent some time with her. But anyone that knows Remi, knows that she could appear anytime, anywhere. We are sure we will meet up with her again soon, maybe even this weekend...