We had another day of some fairly large climbs. Today the weather was definitely sweatier than it’s been of late, so that made it a bit tougher. The first climb was up Highcock Knob in the morning. That one wasn’t too bad. Then we descended down to the James River. We crossed it on the longest foot bridge on the AT, roughly a 1/4 mile long.

Crossing the river. Food awaited.

Looking at the James River

Some hikers jump in, but it looked a bit sketchy and dirty so we didn’t. Also, the YWAM group was having a hiker feed in the parking lot on the other side, so screw swimming in a dirty river when delicious hot dogs and hamburgers await. We had heard about this feed for the last couple days, so we were excited for it. We were not disappointed, as we rocked numerous dogs, burgers, sodas, and watermelon slices. Good stuff. Pretty cool of them to offer up food for all the thru-hikers in the neighborhood. Continue reading →

We started off the morning with a descent down Cove Mountain with some cool views of the morning fog and clouds down in the valleys.

Views off Cove Mountain

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We dined on the exquisite HoJo breakfast buffet and then hit the trail around 8:15am. The trail was mostly smooth and easy today. It began to run mostly parallel with the occasional intersection with the Blue Ridge Parkway. I think it stays near the Parkway for about the next 100 miles or so. We saw a bunch of the nice views that the Parkway has to offer of the Virginia valleys and mountains.

Blue Ridge Parkway

More BRP

We saw a number of black snakes, ticks, and a turtle. All of these are pretty much daily occurrences now (ugh ticks everywhere now). It was a really enjoyable day of hiking with perfect partly sunny and breezy weather all day. Tomorrow we have a few challenging climbs on the agenda. Continue reading →

Today was a nice leisurely zero day. We enjoyed some iced coffees, Mexican food, and some Busch pounders and Miller Lites by the HoJo pool with Oregon, Lil Bit, and some other thru-hikers. The pool was a little chilly but Oregon and I jumped in. Otherwise not much else to report from today. We thankfully avoided a few large thunderstorms by taking the zero today. Continue reading →

We hit the trail around 8am today for a half day of hiking into Daleville. The trail was mostly easy hiking with a few rocky ridges to traverse. There were a couple powerline views of nearby Carvin’s Cove Reservoir.

Agua

More agua

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Wow, today was basically the epitome of great scenery on the AT. Continue reading →

Early today we traversed through some really idyllic farmland.

Rolling pastures

Fresh cut field with trail crossing it

Really neat farmland scenery. Shortly after, we passed by the approximately 300 year old Keffer Oak.

I think it’s so super cool that a tree like this survived so much. Being around giant old trees like this give me the chills. (There is supposedly one bigger along the AT in New York.) Continue reading →

We hit the trail around 7:30am today. We passed by a “hiker feed” at a dude’s house who is simply named “The Captain”. This is something he apparently does roughly two weeks after Trail Days every year. He makes a crap-ton of free food for hikers. His house is literally right across a creek from the trail and he has a zip line to get there. Pretty badass, but it was too early in the morning for us to stop in when we got there. Anyway, I’ll come back to him. Continue reading →

We headed out of the hostel by 7:30am while most of the youths were still snoozing away drunkenly. We had an extra mile or so today from town to get back to the trail. Yesterday we were fortunate enough to get a lift into town from a church group who is doing a portion of the trail together called Y-Wam (I think?). We have chatted with them a few times and they’ve been really nice. Anyway, we had heavy packs from the resupply. We just go nuts at the grocery store when we buy supplies and get way too much. It’s always fun to eat it all though after we lug it up the mountain. The trail traversed through a yard and then some wooded areas right by some industrial plants outside Pearisburg.

Yea right through some dude's lawn...strange

So scenic

We ascended out of town, which is always steep it seems. We encountered this little guy on the trail.

A turtle doing its turtle thing

We had a couple nice views from some of the ridges today. We were basically right on the Virginia-West Virginia state line on this ridge. I think we stay on the border for a bit here (but don’t actually go into WV for quite a while).

West Virginia off the left/west

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