Trail days

The past few days since my last post have been beautiful days to be outside. Encouraged by the cool dry air, I decided to put in some big miles to make it to Waynesburo by Friday when Amy came in. But after two days of 30+ miles, I decided to scrap the plan and just relax on friday. It was one of the toughest sections of virginia (including one of the most famous descents called "The Priest") and I was worn out. So, on friday I took a three hour lunch, stopped to talk to several people, and just mozzied along. I met a guy from Annapolis, a girl named tag who got engaged while on a previous thru hike (apparently it didn't last) and a cool guy from Harpers ferry that develops facial recognition software for the FBI. Soon the day was coming to an end and I still had 6 miles to go before meeting Amy so I hurried down the trail trying to make it in time. I turned out that Amy was running about 2 hours late due to DC traffic, so I went back up to an overlook, watched the sunset, and warmed up by the fire a local family had made. Soon after sunset, I met up with Amy (who had arrived a bit early and went hiking to find me, only in the wrong direction) and ate 3 chick-fil-a meals and some homemade cookies that Amy brought me.

We got into Damascus around 1:00 AM for trail days and set up our tent at The Place. I spent most of saturday morning shooing around at the vendors and bought two hammocks and some socks. In the afternoon we participated in the hiker parade, watched the hiker talent show, and listened to some concerts. In the evening we watched a documentary about the first thu hike of the American Discovery Trail, or ADT. The day ended with a stroll through tent city checking out all of the different neighborhoods. Riff raff was a good party scene with a huge fire and good music, but I think billville was my favorite. It's set up by a bunch of old guys who thu hiked in the 90s I think. On their thru hike, one guy (now the billville mayor) went to a yard sale and met a retired man who was selling all of his work clothes from Tractor Resupply. Another guy had torn his shirt, so when he heard about the yard sale he bought one too. On and on it went until it became fashionable to wear Tractor Resuply shirts on the trail, and there was an army of hikers out there with these shirts saying their name is Bill. I heard the original Bill even bumped up the price from 50 cents to $10 due to the demand. Anyways, all of these "Bills" come back to trail days each year.
On sunday we drove back to waynesburro and stopped at Devils Backbone brewery for some tasting. It's a nice area. There were at least three other breweries and several wineries in the area. Then we were going to go hike to a waterfall, but decided to just get dinner due to time constraints. I'm sleeping in my hammock in the city park tonight and will enter the Shenendoahs tomorrow. I ended up skipping about 15 miles of the trail, but I don't really care. There wasn't much to see anyways and I can always come back if I eventually want to hike every blaze.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention my presents! Amy bought a new Osprey backpack for me and brought down a fixie bicycle to use at trail days. It was great being able to cruise around damascus on a bike and I'm excited to try out my new pack.