Date: 2016-05-20
From: camp site

To: before VA
Miles today: 27.0

Day 39- May 20,2016Today we woke up at a campsite about two miles from the last shelter. Dregs wanted us to make at least 20 miles today so that we would have an easy day to Damascus, VA tomorrow. We need to get to the post office tomorrow before 10am so that Dregs can finally get his replacement trekking poles. As we were getting ready, I saw break neck quickly hike by. He is the guy who was arrested in hotsprings by some cop who has seemed to be targeting hikers. He said hi and kept up his quick pace. Not long after, Bombay passed our site too. We got hiking by 8am and I felt tired to begin with. My body felt tired from pulling long miles the last few days and was not ready for another long day. To help with the fatigue so early in the day, I put in headphones and went. As we hiked, we passed by the grave site of a hermit who lived in that area of the woods for fourty years. Grave stone was in the ruins of his old stone chimney and it said "lived alone, suffered alone, died alone". Pretty depressing. There, a PCT hiker named Pie stopped over to check out the grave and then she passed us. Day had pretty easy terrain. We caught up to Bombay at a road before a farm. The trail passed through a cattle farm and we got to be among all of the cows. Bombay got real close to a calf to get pictures and dregs joked about trying to ride them. As we passed through, we saw one of the cows had both horns and an utter... The three of us hiked together the next three miles to a Shelter where we would have lunch. We saw merlot there and met Pie officially. Wallet showed up after the others had moved on and we talked to him for a bit. He told us of the mouse issues in the last shelter that we passed up. He said that they were everywhere and one even crawled into bombays sleeping bag at night. We finished up lunch and hiked another 8 miles to next shelter. In the forecast it said that it was supposed to rain at 5. We got to the next shelter at 5pm and up to that point had already gone over 21 miles for us that day. Bombay had already arrived and we met a guy named morning wood. He had a funny pink hat with flowers and apparently had some interesting stories. Though it was supposed to rain, we decided we wanted to keep hiking so we would have an easier time getting to town early. Dregs went to get water and I hiked on to find home. I ran into merlot on the way and chatted for a bit before I continued about another 3.5 miles. I found a spot and set up camp quickly to avoid rain. It was about 6:15 and I could see the storm rolling in around us. It was extremely windy and I had a hard time putting the tents footprint down without it blowing away. Merlot arrived and set up next to us. Not long after, Dregs showed up and we ate dinner and got in the tent as the rain started. It violently rained for a few hours while the wind pounded the tent. We were lucky we had gotten ready and in the tent before the storm started though dregs got a little wet coming back from hanging the food bags. Today turned out quite well as it was our first day doing about 26 or 27 miles and avoiding the major thunderstorm. Damascus tomorrow, and finally in VA. What an accomplishment. It's pretty exciting we have gotten this far and it has been such an awesome journey. Each day we get stronger and braver and keep overcoming the many challenges put ahead of us. I can't wait to see what VA has in store for us.