Date: 2018-05-04
From: Abingdon Gap Shelter

To: Damascus, VA
Miles today: 9.7
Weather: overcast clouds

The morning when you go into town is a bit like Xmas morning and we had agreed to get out early. I was up before my alarm at 7:15am and was hiking shortly after 8. It was a pleasant morning and I made good time on mostly level and downhill terrain. We only stopped briefly at the sign denoting the TN/VA border to snap a couple pics. The real celebration for attaining our new state would come in the form of town food and beer at the Damascus brewery later. Upon entering town, we were immediately taken with its small town vibe and we wasted no time in following the trail across the bridge and down laurel street to the Damascus diner. Thunderbird was seated at the diner counter and we joined him. Apparently he just caught a shuttle in after experiencing some severe foot pain after leaving Erwin. No sooner had he cleared an antibiotic treatment for open blisters than he got a new pain starting up. He saw an outfitter and got some insoles and will take a couple more days off before getting out again. The trail can be frustrating sometimes, throwing multiple ailments at you in quick succession.I thoroughly enjoyed a meatloaf sandwich with fries and a house salad and we then went by the post office to pick up packages. My aunt Donette had baked a shoebox full of peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies so we would be set on baked goods for the coming week. We then headed up to the broken fiddle hostel and checked in, sort of. Some hostels on the trail are more laissez-faire than others but this one takes the cake. We wound up doing our own bedding laundry so that we would have clean linens for the night but not before washing our own clothes. You never really know what to expect with these places but the people there were nice enough and the plumbing worked so nothing too major to complain about. There is a coffee shop/cafe down the street called mojos so we took the opportunity to grab an iced coffee (and maybe a couple beers). Thunderbird was down there too so we all sat together at the bar and caught up on the game of who¢s where on the trail these days.We knew the brewery opened at 6 so we timed our walk to the other end of town to arrive there at the appropriate hour, stopping by the outfitters on the way. I talked with Jeff at Mt Rogers and he almost immediately recognized my foot problem and recommended some inserts that would help keep my arch supported. My original insoles have taken close to 500 miles worth of beating and that¢s when they typically go to hell. I can already feel my arch being pushed up which is a little sore but the pressure point in the middle of my foot isn¢t sharply painful with every step. It¢ll take a day or two to know for sure if this is going to make my foot feel better but I¢m pretty confident that it will start to improve.We left the main drag and walked the rest of the mile down around the bend to the brewery. They poured a mean mango sour and that would be the beer of choice for most of the evening. We chatted with some other hikers that had just gotten in (smoke, butcher, Floyd) and listened to some pretty awful local musicians who were trying their best on open mic night. Super nice old boys who had fun chatting up the crowd between tunes but not a passable singer among them. After a while, ibex handed me her phone and told me to give Head chef directions to the brewery as he¢d just walked in to town! He was able to hitch down and within moments we were celebrating a tramily reunion. We capped it off by ordering some pizzas from across the street and when the brewery closed, we hitched a ride back to the hostel with a local who we¢d been talking with most of the night. There was a crew out on the back patio when we got back so I sat out there and had a beer and bourbon before finally calling it a night. We will zero here tomorrow and try to take care of some of our trail needs before getting back out on Sunday.