Date: 2009-05-12
From: Nolichucky Hostel and Outfitter, Erwin, TN

To: Virginia Creeper Trail near Damascus, VA
Miles today: 12.0
Weather: scattered clouds

The Road to DamascusWe ended up spending three more days at Uncle Johnny's, taking a few hikes up the Nolichucky river, a few more trips into town, and just taking the opportunity to hang out with Maxwell, Ten Sticks, Giggles and Stone Skipper. On Monday, Stone Skipper, Calamity and Junior took off to hitch up to Damascus in advance of the Trail Days Festival. Since it looked like another day of thunderstorms, we decided to ride it out one more day at Uncle Johnny's and hitch up to Damascus on Tuesday. So Liz and I went to the local grocery and picked up a 30 pack of hot dogs, a similar sized pack of hamburgers, plenty of buns and all the fixin's. We returned to the hostel and grilled everything up and provided our own trail magic to all the new hikers coming into the hostel that evening. It felt good to give something back.When Tuesday came, Giggles offered to take Liz, Ten Sticks, and I up to Damascus in his car, which seemed like a much better idea then hitchhiking. At the last minute, Lemonhead, a kid that had also been hanging out at the hostel, decided to come with us as well. So we loaded up 5 people, 2 dogs and 5 backpacks into a Toyota Corolla (with 3 packs strapped to the roof) and headed up to Damascus, with Einstein on Liz's lap and Rio on mine. Giggles had a great mix of music on his MP3 player, and we were all a bit tired, so we mostly just rode in silence, listening to the tunes and watching the beautiful scenery roll by.When we got to Damascus, we took a swing through downtown to survey the town and went by Tent City, where everyone would be camping for the Trail Days Festival, to confirm that we couldn¢t get in until Thursday morning. We couldn¢t. So we drove up Whitetop Mountain and found a camping spot along a mountain stream.Except for all the garbage we picked up at the site, it was a beautiful place to camp ¢ in a thicket of rhododendrons by a waterfall that fed into the rushing creek. Einstein and Rio both played in the water while we set up our tents and gathered some firewood. Lemonhead spent several hours building a fire ring in the stream complete with a diversion channel to funnel water into our beverage cooler pool in the stream. We took a quick trip back into town to pick up dinner and supplies and tried to find out who was in town.Damascus is a town of about 1700 people that sits on the southern most part of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia. It has one bar, 2 camping outfitters, a couple of hostels, several eateries, and about a dozen bike shuttle companies who take people to the top of Whitetop Mountain so they can ride the Virginia Creeper Trail back down the mountain to Damascus, and on to Abington, VA if they wish. The trail goes right through the center of town along the main drag. They are known as being a hiker friendly town and serve as the host to the Trail Days Festival each year, a gathering of about 25,000 hikers, bikers, vendors and outdoor enthusiasts. I¢m sure I¢ll have more to write about that in a future entry.After checking out several of the hostels and B&B¢s, we finally ran into N¢Da¢Wind, Calamity and Stone Skipper. Calamity had been offered a job shuttling rafters back at the N.O.C., so she informed us that she would be leaving the trail for a while to work after Trail Days. Stone Skipper was clearly dismayed by this and unsettled at the prospect of hiking alone.After dinner, w3e headed back up the mountain to our campsite. Ten Sticks, who had stayed behind to read, had been hanging out with Einstein while we were gone. Rio was just snoozing in the tent the whole time, while Lemonhead continued to labor away on his fire ring. The fire ring turned out to be pretty cool, but wasn¢t very functional as it was too far away to provide heat or conveniently tend. Giggles serenaded us for the rest of his evening on his guitar.