Date: 2018-08-29
From: Garden Mountain hostel (VA 623)

To: Lickskillet Hostel (VA 608)
Miles today: 28.9

To my mild surprise Farmer is ready to go around 8. The truck needs warming up and the engine kicks like a mule. Mark is nowhere to be seen. It's a five mile ride to the trail, half on gravel. Burke's Garden is a plateau in a bowl surrounded by mountains, Virginia's highest valley. It's beautiful, but takes forever to get anywhere. Before I exit I settle up with Farmer. He has the nerve to charge for my midnight dinner and for the ride back to the trail after I saved him a trip to get me yesterday. These two guys have no business putting out a shingle.At the trail head is a car and large tent 50 yards into the woods. I learn later a trail angel named Gary hangs out there, though he wasn't there yesterday. Gary apparently partnered with Mark on the hostel but they fell out over investment in the septic system or some such. And my story of a late dinner does not surprise those who know the place. Though midnight seems to be the new record. Things start to make more sense why it is such an awkward place.Eager to put this experience behind me, I put it in high gear and speed along the ridge line. The tread is much better here and the elevation changes are minimal. The mornings are still cool and rain does not threaten all day. I'm encouraged that I will be able make my 28 mile day but I'm not feeling it. Only the knowledge that falling short will make the following days harder and possibly cause me to fall short of Daleville pushes me on.That, and knowing there's a little diner at route 52 north of Bland halfway through. Food rules my hiking life.I'm breaking webs much of the morning which means no one's been around, but as I reach the road I meet a seventy-ish genial hiker with full white beard. He started at Springer in April and has only made it this far. His wife has been slacking him with their camper and he's waiting for her now. He promised he'd stop at the end of August so this is almost it for this year. What's crazy is that he started April 16, the same day I did. Our AT tag numbers are 2273 and 2277. I probably passed him climbing the Approach Trail in the first half hour when he was clean-shaven. I hope I was pleasant! And here by sheer chance we meet again. What a crazy world!The Mountain Outpost diner/store is a great lunch stop (or breakfast, which I missed). I get a burger and milkshake, a little resupply, and a couple sandwiches to pack out. Everything is so cheap. Overhearing conversations about truck driving, digging swales on large tracts of land that even struggling families seem to own, and brags about children with careers in the trades making $17/hr, shows this is a very different world than suburban Philly.Back on the trail it follows a road over I-77 with truck traffic roaring and dives hundreds of feet before returning to the forest. The going continues to be relatively easy and only the rising humidity makes it uncomfortable. Water sources continue to be few and poor. As I reach VA 611, a few miles from my destination, the Jenny Knob shelter, I decide to try the Lickskillet Hostel another mile further. I'm already hostel hopping so why not? Mongo the owner agrees to pick me up at the next road crossing. After 29 miles I emerge on VA 608 and Mongo is there early, waiting. His hostel is in a 1911 white clapboard church at a quiet rural intersection. The huge open space is cool and dry and filled with comfortable beds (not bunks!) as well as a common area and enormous TV. I have time for a quick outdoor shower and then we and a southbounder named Nacho Jim head to Wytheville a half hour away to satisfy Jim's craving for a dozen Taco Bell tacos.Mongo has led a difficult life in his 35 years. He fell into the drug trade in Florida as a teen and did time. But he resolved to reform and found God. Four years ago he started hiking and worked for a hostel in Hot Springs. He eventually found this church for sale cheap to start his own hostel. Truly a labor of love, he enjoys helping hikers and goes well out of his way.As if to prove it, he encourages me to slackpack tomorrow and is willing to pick me up 45 minutes away in Pearisburg when I finish. He asks only for donations and charges for nothing. We stay up late having the kinds of earnest discussions one has in a college dorm.  The bed is the most comfortable rest I've gotten on this trip. Maybe on the entire trail.