Date: 2016-05-14
From: Tent City

To: Damascus
Miles today: 0.0

Another crazy night of partying in tent city. Even though there was more people tonight than Thursday night it was actually quieter. I think part of that was due to more activities spread out at the ministry building and I town. A past Thru hiker had come with his band and tented in the woods and were playing cover songs of today's hits. I have no idea how they had power and we couldn't seem them but they had an amplifier and were good. It was nice to have music while watching the fire. We got up earliesh at about 7. It was chilly but sunny. We got up and headed to hunt down coffee. This morning the ministry building was doing a pancake breakfast and they couldn't give our free coffee and have coffee for the breakfast as they didn't have enough equipment to do both. Unfortunately they only took cash and the breakfast only cost 5 dollars. Neither Otter or I at this point had any cash on us and I hadn't seen a bank anywhere. We decided to walk to the Exxon to buy coffee and maybe something breakfast related. We got there and got two coffees and I got a bacon egg n cheese biscuit. I paid and was going to do cash back as an option so I had money on me but it wasn't an option. We drank our coffee and I ate the biscuit. We walked back and packed up some of our stuff. We kinda were thinking about leaving tonight instead of trying to pack up and get out of town when everyone was doing it at the same time. We packed up all the garbage and some of our not needed items. We walked over to the Ministry building and charged our phones for a bit, then headed back to Vendor row to put our names into all the raffles again. We wandered around for awhile and finally I bumped into Ompi who I haven't seen since Fontana Dam. That made me happy snd I got to meet his guy Chad. I was smart this time to get his cell phone number so we can keep in contact. At this point we were hungry snd trying to figure out how to get cash as none of the good vendors take debit cards. We walked into Dollar General and bought a few drinks in hopes of getting cash back. They had signs on the machines that said cash back not available at this time. Well when purchasing my stuff the option popped up and I selected 40 back. The cashier didn't say anything and I was desperate. It does make sense if every hiker is doing cash back they would probably run out of money. It's not a bank but I had not scene an ATM since I got there two days before. Now Otter and I were starving so we walked the Virginia Creeper Trail to Subway and got sandwiches. This was the only none sit down place in town. It helped walking to that part of town as that was where you were to gather for the hiker parade. We finished eating and walked back to our tent. We broke it all down and packed up. Brought it all back to the car and packed to the car. At this point it was 1:45 and the hiker parade which I really wanted to do was at 2:00. We headed back to Main Street and I split from Otter who was gonna watch from Main Street. I walked the Trail back to Subway and meet the 1000's of other hikers that were already there. The premise of the parade is the police, fire, vets, boys scouts, beauty queens march first. Then the hikers march. Not sure if it's like this every year but with this being the 30th anniversary of trail days they had the hikers line up by years. I think the 1990's were grouped together then the 2000's then 2010,2011,2012,2013,2014,2015 then 2016 at the end. The towns people all line the streets with hoses, water guns etc to clean off the dirty hikers. Where it was cloudy, windy and in the high 60's Otter wasn't feeling being soaking wet. He watched and took pictures. The parade ended at the common where vendor row is. We met back up and went to all the booths we signed up for the raffle for. Granite Gear was first and nothing, then we had Hyperlite next and nothing. Kelty was last and I won a 150 dollar sleeping bag. Wohoooo. The final raffle was Backpacker which was nothing but we both got a knife/fork combo they were handing out because we were early. The raffle ended and we jumped into the car and headed back towards Hot Springs. We stopped for coffee as I saw Starbucks and got excited and we grabbed a quick dinner at BK cause we were both starving. We got back to Hot Springs at about 9:30. The plan tomorrow is to wash clothes, wash gear, pack and get back on trail Monday morning. I'm going to stop at post office to send home either the new gear or the old gear. The weather looks decent the rest of the week.