Date: 2005-05-14
From: Virginia 623, Laurel Creek

To: Bland, Va.
Miles today: 15.3
Weather: light rain

In the morning, the rain was dropping a little bit. Most of it was dripping from the trees.   Most of the fog had cleared, but basically the inside of my tent was interestingly wet. I say 'interestingly' because the wind had been blowing through pretty strongly through the fog, and it seemed to all condense on the netting on one side and drip down into the tent; which is probably better than condensing on everything in the tent. I've never seen that happen before.OC1 and I decided to cook breakfast this morning. We got up a little on the late side because of all the dampness. I made some seafood chowder and he made some grits. While we were sitting there cooking, a car pulled up. Out popped two section hikers that had camped by us in Crawfish Valley. Turns out, they were hiking for 7 days. For the last 2 days, they were doing the 'car to car' thing. They were dropping a car off on one end, and walking to the other. They started out at 4:30 in the morning to drop off one car. They were planning on finishing up in Bland, Va. today.Today was a good day for me. I walked fast. The uphills didn't bother me. It was just a great day.   OC1 and I ended up walking separately some of the time today and meeting up again. He's having a problem. He thinks it's a shin splint, I'm hoping it's a pulled muscle. A shin splint is going to take longer to recover from. He got a little goofy last night and ran the last 4 miles through rocks, he's probably paying for it today. For me, it was a good day with easy ups and good Trail. The rocks were sporting, fun to walk through and there was very little of them. Right around 3 o'clock, about 1/2 mile before Bland, I ended up passing one of the section hikers. He told me that his car was down by the road. I asked him if he could give us a ride to the Dairy Queen. He said yes and that he would wait for us down by the road. I dropped my pack and ran back to where OC1 was. When I did catch him, I told him what was going on and he immediately sped up.   He was thinking about Dairy Queen.I told Vern we had 3 options. Option 1 - We can get down to the road and go to Helveys Mill Shelter, eat and stay there to nurse his leg.Option 2 - I got us a ride to Bland, where we could eat like pigs at the Dairy Queen and get back on the Trail and stay and Helveys Mill Shelter.Option 3 - We could ride to Bland, eat and Dairy Queen like pigs. Go to the Big Walker Motel and stay there and do our laundry, shower and maybe soak in the tub because I'm a little sore myself. OC1 took Option 3. We got our ride to Dairy Queen. We stopped at Dairy Queen for the biggest burgers they had. In the past week, OC1's 'through hiker hunger' has become full blown. I have seen this guy put away more banana splits in the last 7 days than I have in years.   He will go on for a couple of them at a time.OC1 is a fascinating guy. We have become pretty good friends on the Trail. I don't know if we would have become friends if we didn't have that in common. I dont know if I've ever described him. He's 55, probably a few inches shorter than I am, slight build. A very friendly, low-key guy. You would never know that he's a 5th degree blackbelt or that he owned a dojo. He's also a white-water fanatic. What I do know is that he's in great shape, he kicks my ass going uphill. I can no longer keep up with him. My only advantage is that I'm alot faster on flats because I have longer legs. I can usually either keep up with him or get ahead of him.After we ate at Dairy Queen, we got a room at the Big Walker Motel and did our laundry with bars of soap in the garbage cans because there's no laundry there. We washed out things and hung them out to dry. Also at the Big Walker Motel, there were a few through hikers who had elected not to go back to Damascus for Trail Days. A couple I had never met before. An older man called 'Newbie', he had his knee replaced 2 years ago and now he's here through hiking. Buffalo Bob was there; Poet, a lady in her 30's. Horizon pulled in while we sat on the front deck. Horizon is Morgan, an 18 year old kid. He's out here section hiking back to Massachusettes, I believe. He started on the Trail about 3 days before I did. As a matter of fact, I watched him walk through Neel's Gap the day before I started. He's a big kid at 18. He's very interesting. He is also walking back home to his job as a babysitter for the President of Amherst University.He asked us if he could stay in our room and sleep on the floor, and we said yes. He had an interesting night the night before. He likes to night hike, so he had hiked through all the serious rain we had hit. He doesn't have a tent, he uses a tarp. Somehow, with all the wind, the tarp blew away from him in the middle of a rainstorm. He said he was butt naked trying to get his tarp back together. He got soaked and pissed off. He said he considered quitting. His pack also took a dump on him. The stay on his pack popped out. I told him to give me all of his information and I would call Osprey for him to try and get them to send him a new pack. Mainly, I was going to pretend to be him, because I sound older on the phone than he did. Several times we called it was busy.We walked down to Dairy Queen again at around dark for more burgers, ice cream and beer. Horizon came with us for that. We got back to the motel and talked and smoked and made nuisances of ourselves until about midnight.