Date: 2007-05-09
From: Damascus, VA

To: The Creeper Trail
Miles today: 10.0

So here I am at the Marion Virginia Public Library, happy to update all of my wonderful readers of all that's happened since my last posting. Damascus turned out to be not as friendly a town as everyone lead us to believe. For some reason we had some bad luck and ran into several individuals who had preconceived notions about what thru hikers are. I guess the saying is true that "one bad apple can spoil the bunch" because apparently there have been some hikers who were rough and rowdy and because of them, certain people make stereotypes about all hikers. We were treated very disrespectfully on several occassions and I'm guessing it's because people assume we're something entirely different than who we are. I find this very sad and hope to remember it as a lesson in my own life because it never feels good to have someone criticize you without knowing anything about you. Even though our experiences in Damascus were okay for the most part, I learned several valuable lessons from the unpleasant aspects of our visit. So, even when things are difficult out here, there are still so many things we can learn. One person realized that they had not been kind to us and apologized, even buying us lunch and wishing us well on our trip. That made things a little better. We left the town of Damascus, Virginia on May 8th and decided to take a blue blaze trail ("What in the blue blazes Charlie!") down a side trail called the "Creeper" until the next day, which proved to be a great idea and we had a lot of fun. The Creeper is a bike trail that runs something like 17 miles gradually down the hillside into Damascus. We hiked a few miles out of town on it and enjoyed the creek that flowed parallel to it the entire way. Bailey got the chance to swim, swim, swim and it was obvious from the tail wagging that she had a marvelous time! Even better, there was a great swimming hole for us hikers to jump into. We met some new friends along the way named Suess, Dr. Ninja, the Breeze, and Nice... a great group of guys. It seems like there aren't a lot of girls out here. A few miles further we found the Creeper Trail Cafe and enjoyed a lunch followed by ice cream and a frisbee game. Aren't we lucky? Nearing the end of the day we came to a deep spot in the creek and wanted to go for a swim before moving on to our camping spot. When we started to walk towards it, a man yelled at us that we could look at the water but we could not stay because it wasn't party cove and we weren't invited. This was a very frustrating moment for me and I walked away and sat down to talk to Kevin. I had reached my limit of being treated in this way and couldn't understand why people would claim ownership over areas that are here for everyone to share. Mattlanta, one of the great people I'm lucky to be traveling with, talked to the man a bit later and was able to get an apology and to convey to the man that he had acted inappropriately. I guess people come out here looking for solitude and find that there are a lot of people, a lot more than I expected. Maybe that's why people are frustrated and act disrespectfully in response... I don't know. All I know is that a little respect from everyone goes a long way and it really isn't much to ask for.By the end of the day we were back on the Appalachian Trail and camped under a large trestle bridge, happy to be back out in the woods with Damascus behind us.