Date: 2005-04-24
From: Jenkins Shelter

To: US 21/52- Bland, VA
Miles today: 11.5
Weather: light snow

When I woke up, I noticed it was dead silent. I pulled my head out of my bag and looked outside to see about 2 inches of snow on the ground. Just two days ago, I was sweating like crazy! But such is the trail. Even with the lure of town only a mere 11.5 miles away, it took forever for us to get going. Everything was completely frozen. All of my hiking clothes were still wet, err, frozen so I just left on my dry clothes since I was heading to town for the night anyway. Even my poptarts were frozen, I ate one pack and saved the other for a snack later. Other than that, I was completely out of food. The last thing I did was put on my shoes, and boy I was in for a shock--they were completely frozen. Now I had read about people's shoes freezing, but I have never experienced it first hand. Rest assured, that it is NOT a pleasant experience at all. My shoes being soaked from yesterday's rain/snow storm didn't help either. They didn't bend at all. It almost took an hour of walking for them to thaw out completely. Walking with frozen shoes is a very painful thing, just hope none of you ever have to do it! We took the high trail around the creek, which had about 12 crossings and the guidebook assured us that we would be getting wet. Since below freezing temps and being wet really don't mix, we decided to take the detour. We reached a road crossing, and found a cooler with some trail magic in it. Little bottles of orange juice were left there by a hiker named Papa Ratzi. I split my last pack of poptarts with Stick, since he was out of food too and kept on going. The trail was up pretty much the whole way to town, which really doesn't make sense, should be going down, but I didn't care I just kept going. I left Stick and Selina behind, telling him I would meet him at the Subway in town. The weather worsened-the wind howled and the snow kept coming down. Down at the road into town, my spirits soon fell. The road looked deserted. No cars were passing. This feeling was short lived as the first car that passed picked me up and took me staight to Subway. He told me that there is only one hotel in town and no laundrymat. Not off to a good start. In town, I discovered that the town of Bland is well, quite bland. There was hardly anything there. I didn't worry too much about it at the moment, I went inside and indulged in some Subway. Stick and Selina showed up about 20 minutes later. After eating we went to a gas station for a few things and asked the guy if he knew how much a room was, he said about 35 dollars. Not a bad deal. We walked up to the hotel and talked to the lady at the front desk. She told us it would be 50 dollars. Before Stick and I could decide if we wanted to take it or not, Selina quickly blurted out "Well, the guy over there told us it only be 35." The lady behind the counter said in her best hick accent, "he ain't work here, does he?" Just listening to her say that made my IQ drop by about 15 points. Gotta love southwest Virginia. After a short discussion, Stick and I weighed our options. Our only other options were to hitch hike 15 miles down interstate to the next town, not knowing how we'd get back, or hike another 5 miles down the trail and spend the cold wet night in a shelter. Stick and I opted for the hotel. We told Selina she could stay if she wanted, that way the room wouldn't be so expensive.The hotel room left much to be desired, especially for 50 bucks. There was no laundry and the hotel wouldn't let us use their washer so we busted out the bars of hotel soap and did it in the sink. Turned on the heater full blast and had wet clothes hanging everywhere. You can always tell a thru hiker's hotel room by the clothes hanging everywhere, shoes outside the door, and the door is open, even when it is 30 degrees outside, because of the smell. Spent the afternoon resting, watching tv and resuppling. The only place to resupply was the dollar store. Gotta love the dollar store. With some skill, one can resupply pretty cheap. No where else can you get 4 days worth of food for $5.14. Met the "Garland 5", a family thru hiking from New Hampshire. Very nice folks. They too are in this crummy hotel. Ate some DQ for supper and off to bed early. Stick and I are planning to pull a Plan A tomorrow. Going to get a late start. After watching the weather channel, the forcast isn't looking good at all. It is predicting rain through friday. Hopefully we'll be in Pearisburg by Wednesday.