Date: 2008-09-28
From: punchbowl shelter

To: james river foot bridge
Miles today: 11.0

What a beautiful day, the sun has once again begun to shine down upon us! We had a nice leasurly morning walking down to the river. Yes, today is the day we meet up with strange habits (a fellow hiker we met in CT when we were headed north) family! We met up with them around 2, Strange habit and her mom, Karen greeted us with excitment they even had a cooler of cold drinks! We loaded up our stuff and took off towards Roanoke, where they live, catching them up on trail stories and such. It was great to shower up, do laundry and relax. They truely are a very welcoming, hospitable family!! Looking forward to spending a few days with them as they are going to slack pack us from the foot bridge into catawba. This is really amazing considering it is about 70 or so miles and takes a lot of time and gas to drive us to and pick us up at the trail head each day!!! That night Karen was excited to take us up to the Roanoke star, which is the largest man made star that is lit up with red white and blue lights. It is set on top of the Roanoke mt looking down on the town. We were pretty excited about seeing it also, a view of city lights, a much different view from and overlook than what we had been used to seeing the last few months. We were in for an adventure...when we loaded into the car Karen warned us that she isnt good with directions, that her husband and strange habit had given her directions of how to get to the star from town instead of taking the blue ridge parkway. So we headed into town, we spotted the star on top of the mt and began to drive towards it, the next thing we know we are in a neighborhood that doesnt seem to lead to the top of the mt. So we turn around and try to follow the signs that had a picture of the star on it, but even this didnt pan out as the signs took us to one point and then seemed to disappear. So Karen decided to just take us via the blue ridge parkway, the way she was pretty sure how to get there. So we are driving and chatting away, i was thinking that it was taking quite a bit longer than I had expected it to, but you know I've never been here before so I dont really know, about that time Karen remarked that she also thought it was taking a long time, that it should be coming up soon so we finally saw the sign for roanoke mt, then shortly after there was a drive on the right to turn into i thought that must be it but didnt say anything because she knew where she was going so I thought okay well it must just be a bit further down the road, so about 15 or so minutes later she called her husband and figured out we had driven past it, that it was the drive i had suspected earlier. we eventually arrived, loved the view with all the city lights. so we learned that when she said she had trouble with directions she wasnt lieing! It is all pretty funny and she was really cute as she was embarrased that we got so turned around, but hey it was an adventure, so just a warning if you get in the car with Karen you might be in for the ride of your life, just ask strange habit to give you a ride. (hmmm, wonder who is going to be taking us to and from the trail the next few days on the roads that are not so well marked.....haha)