Date: 2013-04-25
From: Damascus, VA

To: Damascus, VA
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: few clouds

Chillin' in DamascusDay 8: Today was our day to rest the muscles and to take care of some shopping...In hiker parlance it is a "Zero Day" because no miles were hiked on the trail. Damascus is a small town that reminds Spider of the mid-west towns he grew up in. It is at the junction of two rivers and also the junction of two trails, AT and the Virginia Creeper Trail. It took us only about 1/2 hour to walk around the whole town. We started by going to a local cafe called Mojoes for breakfast. Then to the drugstore for a couple of things and to the hiking outfitter for a couple more things. The rest of the day was spent relaxing and reading..with a lunch break at the local Dairy King (yes, "King") and dinner at the nicest restaurant in town overlooking the falls on the Laurel River...because it was the only place in town where Spider could get a steak!! We also use our Zero Days to assess our physical condition. We both seemed to fare fairly well for our first week on the trail...Spider has a couple of "hot spots" on his feet that he is tending ("hot spots " for those of you that are not hikers, are areas that are being rubbed and have turned red and feel hot...this can be a precursor to a blister if left unattended). We both wear knee braces on each knee and so far the knees have not "talked" to us too much !!..although ET had to replace one brace today with one that fit her better. So far daily intake of Vitamin I (Ibuprofen) has taken care of any muscle pain. Sore spots on the shoulders and hips from carrying a pack for 8-10 hours a day are finally beginning to diminish. Overall I'd say we are as ready as we can be to hit the trail again tomorrow for our next 7 days of hiking. Now a few random topics mentioned in previous posting that I should elaborate on: Trailnames: People who spend a lot of time on the trail soon get to know others on the trail and it essentially becomes a moving community of hikers. You can imagine how many Tom, Dick, John, Cathy, Susie and Mary's there are. So the hiking community gives a trailname to people usually based on something that happened on the trail. Some are flattering, like Dragonfly...others are not, like Poop Pants!! ET actually gave a name to a hiker that couldn't start the day without his specially prepared coffee..French Press!! So far as we can tell there are no other people on the trail with the name Energizer Turtle/ET. However, there is another hiker with the name Spider. Apparently he is a young man with a spider tattoo on his neck and is several days behind us. Someday the young Spider may catch up to the old Spider. Unfortunately all this old Spider has to show for his trailname is a bunch of spider veins on his legs !! Norovirus: I'd mentioned in an early post that we were avoiding congregating with other hikers at shelters etc. in the first part of our hike because of an outbreak of the Norovirus on the trail. Spider had done some research before we hit the trail and found that the virus was affecting 50-85 percent of the hikers on the trail just south of where we were planning to start (Now you can understand how someone would end up with a name of "Poop Pants"!!). The virus is fairly hardy and can live up to a month at room temperature on most surfaces. By avoiding shelters, we were trying to avoid the contaminated surfaces. However, now that the temperature has dropped at or below freezing twice in the mountains we won't avoid the shelters as much. The weather forecast is for "showers" Saturday through Monday...so it looks like our rain gear will once again be tested.