Date: 2004-04-28
From: VA 42

To: VA 617
Miles today: 11.1

Today is Wednesday April 28th. And we stayed the night at the Virginia House Inn in Marion. This morning we dropped 1 car off at Virginia 617. And we drove up and over Little Brushy and Walker Mountain. Parked our car at Virginia 610 at 9:30am. we went up over a stile, more like just some boards to climb over. And went through a pasture with about six baby calves looking at us. And then over another stile and on to what might have been old Rich Valley Road. So you start to climb over Walker and Brushy Mountain, there are rock stairs and rocks. And you keep going up until you're at the top at about 10:30 a.m. You can get some good views from here, because the leaves haven't fully came out on the trees yet. It was pretty nippy this morning, there was frost on our windows of our car. We started out hiking with fleece on and now we're back to just short sleeve shirts. We talked to Becker on top of Walker Mountain for quite a while. Naturally we talked about hiking, weather and people on the trail. He told us a bunch of people are talking about blue blazing (canoeing) on the Shenandoah River for a hundred miles, instead of hiking. Then you jump back on the trail a hundred miles further north. Five more minutes down the trail we came across MC and Willow Having lunch. And then another five minutes down the trail we came across Sweet Cheeks , she said she likes to just sleep in on these cold mornings until later. Another 20 minutes down the trail we run into Slick, Who we had last seen taking the Virginia Creeper Trail out of Damascus, instead of the Appalachian Trail. Then we ran into Castro down at the Reed Creek Valley. He was having lunch or breakfast. I don't know what it was, we went on up the trail just a little bit and stop for our own lunch. We stopped at 12:08 and continued on at 12:32 p.m. I had pizza while Terry had peanut butter, since he ate all his pizza last night. Then we started up little Brushy Mountain and ran into Burn who was very talkative and friendly. He told us about staying at Partnership shelter and they ordered pizza. And then they burn the pizza boxes afterwards, and some of the ash blew up in the air and landed on his head, and caught his hair on fire, but no damage. He knew a hiker on the trail whose name was Ashtray. Cindy said they should be hiking together, Burn and Ashtray. He said they do hike together but Burn is much faster. On the trail up further we run into Freedom and Carefree again and talk again. And that got me thinking that we might run into them again later today, on that 2.4 mile section we're doing. When he mentioned hamburgers, we thought we might be going by the Dairy Queen, when we shuttle to the next hike. We could pick them up some hamburgers. And then if we don't see them on the trail, those Burgers become our supper. The next people we saw on the trail was an Englishman named the Wandering Nomad. And he knew Nick and thought he was hiking somewhere ahead of us. He said he would like to meet the Englishman named Ross whose Trail name was Cheers. Then Terry told me that he had read all about Cheers on trail journals, how he had fell in love on the trail, but they split up by the time they got to Fontana Dam. And then Ashtray caught up with us. And that was a interesting story about his name. He's also a smoker but he saves all his cigarette butts in his pocket until he gets to a place to dispose of them properly. He also picks up all the cigarette butts he finds on the trail and carries them out. When he first met Burn he wanted to call him an a****** because he threw his cigarette butts on the trail. He said, ¢why don't you throw them further off the trail, so I don't have to see them¢. We also saw Ichabod on the trail and another hiker, Wounded Goose(knee). Ichabod said he's going to meet his wife again in Pearisburg. He thought the Blair Witch movie might have done some filming in Pearisburg. He thought the house in the movie might be an interesting place to stay for the night. Ichabod had thought he might have to get off the trail when his wife got laid off from Discovery credit card. Her severance pay was the money he used to start his hike, and he was hoping she would get another job so he could continue the hike. Well now she's found a new job and his hike is secure. Of course she won't be able to visit him weekly on the trail anymore. They are from Columbus Ohio. He said another guy on the trail is Hoss who We have seen on the trail. And finally we meet Rex (female) bringing up the rear. It's now 3:15 p.m. at the Davis Path shelter. Another guy who went by was honey Pi. We walk while we talk to Ichabod. We met a couple, her name was Wolf Cookie and his name was Dances with Wolf Cookie. Anyway as soon as I heard those names, I just laughed. Now it's on to the car from here, 1.6 miles hopefully. And on to Dairy Queen and to see this babe who works there, that was written about in the shelter journal. And pick up cheeseburgers and hamburgers for people we've met on the trail today. Got to our car on VA 617 at 4:10pm. Our second hike of the day we took one car over to Virginia 42 at 5:10pm. And we were only on the trail for half a mile when we met Carefree and Freedom, and we gave them two hamburgers, of the five we had picked up at Dairy Queen. They ate them right on the spot on the trail . They told us they're from Atlanta, Georgia and somewhere in South Carolina, but are going to be without a home when they finish the trail. The weird part was, we talked a lot about skiing in Colorado with them. We continue on along the Holston River on a beautiful trail, and finally you cross the Holston, on a road where the Old Mill is located. We took some pictures, Steve's trailer was there but no truck. We met Rex coming down the trail but didn't give her a burger, felt bad about it. We finally come out to a big open pasture and we can see our car down at the end of it. We got on the trail at 5:10 p.m. and finished the trail at 6:40 p.m. When we came out to the car, there were about seven hikers we had seen all during the day, just enjoying the view of Walker Mountain. It was just a very beautiful evening. We didn't have enough hamburgers to give everybody, so we just gave them all of our 7 snack bars we had with us . Didn't see Buckeye again, went back over to Va 42 to pick up our car.