Date: 2016-05-01
From: Helvey's Mill Shelter

To: Pearisburg VA
Miles today: 42.5
Weather: scattered clouds

Helvey's Mill Shelter to Pearisburg VA5/1/16 end mileage 610.1   It rained overnight at Helvey's Mill Shelter and once again, everything I have is wet. Today we have a stop scheduled at Trent's Grocery for a small resupply and hopefully a shower and laundry. That's about 16 miles into the day.    We hiked until we crossed Kimberling Creek today on a nice big footbridge and this put us at VA 606, the road that Trent's Grocery is on. Wouldn't you know it but there was trail magic waiting for us at the road! A couple whose names are Beth and Bernie had come up from Florida on their vacation and were set up and giving out sodas, sandwiches, and high-calorie treats like Little Debbie, just because they wanted to. They're not even hikers! Very nice people, and then Bernie gave Caboose, Spiderman and me a ride the half mile up the road to Trent's Grocery.    Trent's Grocery is a small grocery store out in the middle of nowhere which also has a campground, of sorts, with showers and a laundry facility, of sorts. The showers were very dirty and not well maintained, but we were dirtier so we used them anyway. Caboose ended up getting a cold shower because the washing machine was going at the same time, and so was my shower which mysteriously remained hot! The washer and dryer worked okay and we dried out our gear on the lawn while we waited for the laundry to finish. Then we decided to go in the store and order a pizza. By the time we were done with all this, five hours had elapsed since we arrived at the store and we still had to find a place to camp for the night. So we set off back on the trail and hiked two more miles, the last of it in the dark until we got to Dismal Falls where we set up in the dark. There's only one thing worse than trying to find a good branch and throw a bear line over it and that's doing it in the dark! We had quite a thunderstorm in the night and it seemed to cross right directly overhead. 5/2/16 end mileage 634.6   Woke up this morning to a wet tent because of the rain in the night but the sky appeared to be clear above a low lying layer of fog. Packed everything up wet and headed out. Since we were near Dismal Falls but hadn't see them in the dark the night before we went down to take a look at the falls. They were certainly not dismal but quite impressive after the night's rain and I'm glad we made the short detour down to see them. After that we got going with Spidey and the trail was quite wet for most of the day. There was a lot of water flowing in the woods that I think is not normally there and you could hear running water most of the time. As the sun burned off the fog, the woods came alight with sparkling drops of water on everything. It was a nice day for hiking even though the trail was muddy and like a brook in many places.    We were headed for the town of Pearisburg VA today and it was our longest day yet, 24.5 miles to the road in to town and then another .9 miles uphill in to town. It had clouded over in the last few miles and the clouds opened up and poured on us as we reached the road. By the time we reached our motel we were soaked, but we still had a lot to do before bed. We had to get supper, do our laundry and shop for food before bed. We got all that done but I still didn't get to bed until after midnight and we had to get up at 0630 in the morning to get on the trail. It turned out that all the rushing around was unnecessary though, because when we got up in the morning we decided to take a zero day in Pearisburg. 5/3/16   Since we decided to zero today I was able to relax and have a little fun. We had a late breakfast at Hardee's where we ran into Seabiscuit, Food Bag and Learning Curve, who I hadn't met before. After breakfast we all went to DQ and had Blizzards. While we were outside the restaurant talking and eating our Blizzards I happened to mention that I might have a Twisted Tea back at the motel later. Presently, Learning Curve disappeared and soon returned from the store next door with a bag. He opened it up and said to me "take your pick". It contained two 24 oz. cans of Twisted Tea! I was more than happy to go back to the motel and have a drink on the patio in the sun with my new friend. In fact, I later went back to the store and got a couple more to share. Then someone brought out the card game "Apples to Apples" and a bunch of us sat around and played that for a while. Later on, some of us got hungry and went across the road to an all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant called "Lucky Star" and ate way more than we needed to (that's no small task for thru hikers!).