Day 2 of my hiking… I was planning a longer trip but due to the condition of my feet and my legs from being back on the trail the first time in a year …I decided to cut the next day short a little bit. So I did travel from Bland to VA 611 only about a 10 mile walk. Probably the most exciting thing I had today was seeing a skunk. In other words the trail in Virginia, while the walking is good and level, there just isn’t a whole lot going on other than a walk in the woods.

I did run into a section hiker at the parking lot where I had my car. She said she has a Journal on Trail Journals.com and her name is trail name is “Stripper”. I said I’m gonna have a hard time telling everyone I met a Stripper on the trail. This was pretty much just an uneventful day. I think a lot of people quit in Virginia because of that which is a shame. The best part of Virginians is ahead of me. I have Dragon’s Tooth, McAfee Knob, Shenandoah and of course getting up to Harpers Ferry will be very exciting as well.

I’m giving it a rest here tonight. I was able to do some laundry and shower and get a full meal. I had originally planned a 20 mile day today. I just basically just cut that in half and will be doing it over two days to make sure that I have enough in me to make it through the week. That’s the beauty of my plan to section hike this year using the car and the motorbike. I have a lot of flexibility and I’ll go as far as I want and get off of the trail when I want to and do it under my terms. The trail again in Virginia is not so exciting. It gets a little boring at times. It is great walking and the trail volunteers have done a great job. So that’s why I thought I would try this different method just to shake things up a little bit for me and just get me through the state.  I don’t want to be a casualty like all of all the people who quit in Virginia.

Day 3...

Today is my third day of hiking. I started off the day by deciding to go get myself a breakfast biscuit at Hardees in Pearisburg. I met a young man named Jason. Evidently he may be a little bit notorious in this area according to his own account. I noticed right off that Jason had 2 teardrops tattooed under his eyes. I have always been told that if you have a teardrop if means you been in prison. Well evidently Jason’s been there twice. He is talking about how he’s having a hard time getting a job and I suggested maybe possibly looking into barge work or working on an oil rig. He seemed to like those ideas especially when I told him about the kind of pay he could make on those jobs. I just hope for his sake he can keep it together and best of luck to him.

 Well I knew it was going to rain today and I was just was living on borrowed time as far as my hiking goes when it came to whether or not I would get caught up in the rain. I started off at state RT. 611 it was dry and I got my bike all stashed away. I had a pretty good ride on it and I noticed my muffler was gone. That was my makeshift muffler that I had made the other night out of a couple of Coke cans and some metal tape.

I started my hike and right away I spotted a deer .So that is three days hiking in a row and three wildlife sightings. I go a little bit further for another mile and another deer standing right in the middle of the trail and so I get a picture of him. I probably could’ve gone up and petted this dear. I hope that’s not the case for her sake. It is quite dangerous for a deer that doesn’t fear man. Those weren’t the only deer sightings I had. Before I had finished 4 miles I’d seen 4 deer. I suppose that it was raining earlier in the morning when they should have been out feeding and they were just making up for a bit of lost time.

The hiking here is nice I’m still looking for my hiking MOJO.  I understand why a lot of people quit in Virginia… not that there’s anything wrong with the trails here… it is just a little bit boring. As one hiker told me it’s like you’re hiking in the green tunnel. Well today I didn’t have much scenery but I started to have adventure after about four and a half miles into the hike… the downpour came… and I do mean a downpour. I had my little GoLite hiker umbrella so I whipped that out and things were going pretty good. The rain just never stopped for the entire time I was hiking for the rest of day. At times the downpours got heavy but I was able to stay dry with my umbrella. That is until I reach some grass fields as I approached the end of my hike. When I say grass fields it was just areas that were overgrown on the trail with tall grass and they were soaking my legs and my pants and the water was running down inside my gaiters and therefore inside of my boots. So then my boots got wet inside. They had been completely dry up until that point.

It was fun going over the suspension bridge there at St Rt.606 at what I believe is called Kimberling Creek. I then had a choice. I can walk 1.7 miles on the road to my car on fairly dry footing or I could walk about 1.9 miles through the forest and knock out that much more the Appalachian Trail. So I chose the latter. As I was getting close to Dismal falls I realized Uh Oh I’m on the wrong side of a rain swollen creek. I had gone to Dismal falls a couple days earlier, when I taken the day off, for fear that the weather may not hold up for me to photograph the falls. I was obviously correct in doing so. On that day I had crossed a big long tree that had fallen across the creek. It was wedged in between rocks and I decided to try and stand on this one end where it was dry underneath and see what happens. Well as you can imagine... It was slicker than snot.  So I decided Oh what the heck I have my hiking poles and my feet are already soaked. I’ll feel along and make sure it’s not too deep as I go forward. I’m going to ford this rain swollen creek.  It never really got any higher than just above my knees and I never felt any pressure. Also I did this on the upside of the tree so I had that to hang onto.

So I got to my car and I was no worse for the wear. I had a pair of jeans that were in the trunk an old T-shirt was in there so I went ahead and the slipped in the backseat of my car and made a change of clothing. This day helped me to get my MOJO back little bit even though the hiking itself wasn’t anything spectacular, only about 11 ½ miles, it was raining and it was adventurous crossing the creek and during the rain and with the banks flooded it was a little bit exciting. I enjoyed all of the wildlife sightings …the suspension bridge and an overall fine hiking trail. I’m looking forward to tomorrow for it is the Fourth of July. I think it’s going to rain all day and I’m going to work on getting my boots dried out.

Day 4...

Day 4 of hiking …last night I had ridden the motorbike and parked it adjacent to Dismal Falls. Well today I did not technically get rained on. It had rained very hard all night long and a good portion of the trail could be described as a creek. Things were wet and I was going to be hiking from Sugar Run Gap Rd, just above Woods Hole Hostile, to Dismal Falls. I actually started to run into some hikers today. I ran into the hiker I had met a couple days ago who went by her the trail name “Stripper” and she talked about how messy the trail was.

 I had reached a gravel road that paralleled Dismal Creek about three quarters of the way into today’s hike. I made a decision there. I could take the gravel road which would be on the same side of the road that my bike was parked or I could take the trail and ford Dismal Creek. Based upon the amount of rain and the water in the creek the wise decision probably would’ve been to have taken the gravel road. However,  had I done that I know somewhere down the line 10 and 15 years from now, or whenever I get to go up Katahdin, I would have regretted that decision and it would’ve driven me crazy to the point that I would’ve gone back and re-hiked that section. I ran into a youth group. I’m not quite sure what their status was but they were not what I would define as “Hoods In The Woods”, like I had ran into in Georgia and North Carolina, but rather very polite kids who had very young adult leaders leading them on a hike.

 As I reached Dismal Falls to ford this was not going to be like it had been the other day. The water was up. The current was very strong yet there were people there that were swimming beneath the falls. I had a decision again to make. I could hike the trail out towards Trent’s  grocery and Highway 606 then hike back up the forest road, which would have meant another couple hours of hiking or ford the creek. I had purchased a very inexpensive pair of swim shoes for $4.98 at the Wal-Mart in Pearisburg and I decided I was going to ford the creek above the log where I crossed on day 3. I stripped down to my compression shorts …stuffed everything in my day pack …took my boots off and put on the water shoes. As I got to the middle part of the Creek, and it was at least a good 30 feet wide at this point, the current was as strong as anything I have ever experienced. I’m pretty hard to knock off my feet. I definitely felt the strong current on this one. As I came out on the other side of the creek I experienced an invigorating sense of accomplishment.  I finished another wet day on the Appalachian Trail and I have forded a rain swollen creek.  

I pulled the bike out of the woods and I was going to take the forest road to Sugar Run Gap. Unfortunately the forest roads did not match up with the map, so I decided to take the long route and take Hwy 42 to 100 to Sugar Run Gap. I actually had a very enjoyable ride on the motorbike going back to my car. As I got to my car I ran into Stripper again and she was little worse for the wear from the rain. I offered her a ride from the trail crossing down Woods Hole hostile, 1/2 mi. where she decided she was going to sit it out for the next couple days until she could catch a bus back home.  

Day 5...