Daily Archives: June 19, 2014

Day 65 – mile 987.6 to Blackburn AT Center

5 Replies

Today was a very crazy cool AT day. We got up early again to beat the heat since we had a lot of small but challenging climbs to do in The Roller Coaster. Things started off fine and we got through about 5 miles of it by 9:30 or so. We then unexpectedly hit some trail magic at a little dirt road.

image

Trail angels

These folks were awesome. They made us hot dogs and hamburgers for breakfast. Score! The lady in the picture, Trail Mamma – her husband did a thru-hike in 2012 and they drove 9 hours from their home in Fort Wayne, Indiana, just to do some trail magic this year. Wow… To make it even cooler, years ago her husband was in a serious car accident and broke his neck and the doctors said he either wouldn’t live or would be a quadriplegic. He recovered and went on to not only walk, but to do his thru-hike. So cool. Then not only did they make us food, but they “slack packed” our backpacks about 6 miles up the trail to the Bears Den Hostel. So we got to hike those 6 miles of the Coaster without a backpack. It felt like we were flying. Continue reading →

Day 64 – Front Royal, VA to mile 987.6

6 Replies

We grabbed continental breakfast at the Quality Inn (it was good) and got their return “shuttle” (old maintenance dude in pickup truck) back to the trail. We didn’t get started until almost 11, so it was already sweltering when we started. Most of the day we ambled through the green canopy of Northern Virginia, so that at least kept the sun off of us. Some of the trail went through forests with some really cool tall soaring trees and some went through overgrown weed areas. I think this is kudzu that is taking over some areas?

image

Overgrown weeds

We surprisingly hit two trail magic offerings, which is not typical for a weekday. The first was a software engineer (nerd alert!) who just finished up a section hike and had a spare day and wanted to chat with some thrus. Seemed like a really nice guy. We started to talk about software engineer interview questions and it almost got really nerdy. He wants to thru-hike in a few years. I couldn’t relate to the weirdo.
Continue reading →