Legs and Borders

Sunny day, good miles, ponies! First on the menu was a big ascent to Buzzard Rock, on top of it I've met "hiking mum's", four friends taking few days off from home duties to hike the Appalachian Trail. Ladies were all from Nashville, Tennessee. I talked mostly with Lauren, trail name "Wren", she was a mother of three, working in healthcare and recently divorced. As a democrat she wasn't happy about the current state of politics and she had a lot complains about it. She said that Tennessee in general was a "red state" (voting for republicans) but Nashville was considered a "blue dot" (democrat) on the map. Mums were section hiking the AT, every year they would add a hundred miles or so, they said it should take them another 12 years to complete the trail. Soon enough AT was passing through one of the newer additions to the trail: Grayson Highlands State Park. In the 1960s when Forest Service started to buy a land here to create Nationa...

"Was that a threat or a promise?" Crazy Larry Good day with a slightly adjusted schedule. Initial plan was to hike down few miles to Damascus and stay for the night at the Broken Fiddle Hostel. I've arrived in town at around 8 AM and went straight to the Damascus Diner for breakfast. It was good, I'm not sure why I always get "biscuits and gravy" when they are not mentioned on the menu but they are pretty good so I won't complain, "grits" were also included. After breakfast I went straight to Food City, a local supermarket to resupply for the next four days. Weather was supposed to be excellent all day. At this point I began to wonder if hiking out instead of staying at the hostel wouldn't be a better idea. I've asked the guy at the outfitters where I was buying a new gas canister if there's a place in town where I could take a shower and do the laundry, and I've been told that indeed there is...

"This guy's trail name is "Truffle Pig", he dug out a cat hole to relive himself and found someone else's business inside" Burger Man Another gloomy morning. It was raining really hard over night and I was happy that I stayed in the shelter. A nearby tree must have fallen at night as there was a loud crashing noise for about 10 seconds then it got quiet again. I made a move as quickly as there was enough light to pack everything up, the plan was to get as close to Damascus as possible, get to town early the following morning and have (almost) day off, or what hikers like to call a "nero" ("zero" as per "zero miles" is an actual day off). It finally stopped raining at midday, the fog slowly lifted and the sun made an appearance. To make things even better there was a trail magic at one of the parking lots.Three people from New York led by "Lunch" who thru hiked AT in 2014, were serving grilled sa...

"I was in Europe during Cold War, ready to invade you." Chef Chuck The day didn't really went according to plan but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. My main goal was to resupply at the town called Hampton 7 miles down the road. On the way there trail was passing the road where I was considering staying at the hostel last night. I've got stopped by a man driving back to Black Bear Resort asking if I want to come over for a breakfast, he mentioned that they got resupply as well but it was so early that I didn't clocked in what he said and just said no, thank you. When he left I realized that I could just go there instead of Hampton and save myself few miles of walking (Hampton was further away from trail). I turned back and went to Black Bear Resort instead. I got welcomed by Chef Chuck and he served me best breakfast I had on trail so far. I couldn't decide if I wanted "grits" (type of processed corn grain) or...

Today I ended up way further than expected, thanks to two hikers which unintentionally pushed me forward. Day was foggy and I missed "one of the best views on AT" (people love to say that) in the morning. To be fair the view from Hump Mountain must have been great, but I've seen neighboring landscapes yesterday and that was enough, not much I could do about the weather. Trail was fairly cruisy from that point on, we crossed the 400 mile marker and as I was passing a hiker called Viking I congratulated him on this occasion, he asked me to say hello to his friend called "Second Breakfast" who was ahead on the trail but I never met him. Instead I've bumped into two others, Burger Man and Stretch, they've been hiking to a hostel called Kincora, an oldschool "hiker trash" only place, which was donation based (recommended donation 5$). They almost convinced me to push there even though it was way pass the amount of miles I was...