Date: 2005-05-29
From: lunch at Walkers Gap

To: Symms Gap campsite
Miles today: 0.0

Again, I'm journal slacking more than a bit. Since last I've written we finally met up with ET, the former thru-hiker I mentioned when I was at Walker Gap. He ended up waiting at a road 5 miles north of where we were. It all worked out and we were able to meet up with him. What a nice guy. He brought us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cookies, chips, and soda. True trail magic. That was a long day though, we walked into camp quite late with sore feet. We arrived, set up tents, cooked and the sky opened up on us for a while. It was a great shelter...Jenkins...There were lots of deer around too.We woke up dry, made breakfast and hiked about 5 miles to a road where there were two vans and a truck waiting for hikers to shuttle to an AMAZING free breakfast, care of the New Hope Methodist Church of Bland, Va. I can't even begin to describe the yummy goodness they offered to us. The people were great too! After our second breakfast we hiked another easy 7 miles and got a ride into Bland to resupply. We were debating whether or not to stay or hike out...uh, we stayed. Good, ol Big Walker Motel! BLAND, VA just as it sounds!Pumpkin and I hiked out early the next morning only planning on hiking 12 miles or so. It was nice and easy terrain, we arrived to our original destination so early we kept walking and ended up doing 18.5 miles. The camping was pretty nice, next to a river with suspension bridge. The whole crew ended up meeting us there. Oh...the next day was where the adventure begain! So, Pumpkin and I woke up relatively early, packed up and headed 1/2 mile on the road off the trail to a little store that served breakfast. We were going to eat and then hike 14 miles to a hostel right off the trail. What a great and sensible plan, right? Well, shortly after everyone else show up. We are taking our time and someone brings up the idea of slackpacking. there is a guy out here roughly where we are who hiked in 2003 and has a big mail truck type thing. He's doing shuttles and such and happened to be parked at the bridge that morning. It was finally decided that all 10 of us would load up and get a ride ahead to Pearisburg where we would stay, arrange a shuttle back to the trail the next morning and slack 24 miles into P-burg. Were we crazy? Sounded great at the time, meant we had a zero for that day. Arriving in P-burg we all got rooms at the Rendevous Motel, a trip in itself. Brenda the owner is HI-LAR, extremely entertaining I may even have to go back there at some point. The actual zero day was pretty uneventful, the ride in Tulsa's truck was pretty rad, he had the music cranked up with a discoball hanging from the inside of the roof and we were all on couches. A rockin good time. Town was alright, we went to the post office, Wal-Mart and Wendy's. Arggh..I can't believe I go to those places while I'm out here! Such a contrast!Our slack was long! 24 miles with just water, snacks and rain gear. it sounds much better, but it actually kind of sucked. Just so many miles to do. I don't think I really walked any faster either. We wtarted at 9:10am and got back around 8:45pm. Un buh! And we probably missed out on a few good views too. Oh well. I tried it.