Thursday, May 3, 2012
Today I made it to Virginia. It is hard to believe that I have hiked through Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. I will probably be in Virginia for as long as it took to hike the first three states, since it is such a large portion of the trail.
Tonight, I am staying at the Hikers Inn in Damascus. There are rooms in the home (kind of like a B&B, without the breakfast), and there is a hostel in a building behind the home. It's really nice. The bunkhouse has two bunk beds, and there is a separate private room with a queen bed. I am in the private room. As the trail goes on, I have noticed there are fewer woman still hiking. There are also fewer gentlemen...just mostly males, old and young, who have lost their manners. This is why I try to snag the private rooms! Hiking the AT has become a lot like what I think it would be like to live in a southern college frat house. Oh, the smells!! The hikers with some manners left tend to gravitate to the more expensive lodging (my room is $35. That is considered pricey for a hostel). For instance, last week I stayed at the Kincora hostel. Bob Peoples is the man who runs that place. He is a master trail man, and works a lot on the trail, including miles of re-routes. He is an amazing man who actually reminds me of Elmer Fudd. His hostel is a $5 suggested donation. With that price, you can expect to be bunking with some interesting fellas. It also doesn't bring in any income to keep the place very clean. The saving grace there is that no alcohol is aloud, so the rowdy crowd stays away. After a night there, I stayed in the Black Bear Resort to take my day off. It was a very basic hostel, but the cleanliness made a huge difference. It was $10. They also rent cabins for $50, and I hear they are nice.
A lot of people wonder about the hostels, so I hopes little explanations help. I really love getting to see all the different hostels I have. Even the not so cozy ones have given me great memories. I will never forget the Aquone cabin hostel! Most cozy ever!
Here is a picture of "chronic fatigue syndrome" I asked if he was opening a candy store...but he was just getting his next few days of food ready to hike. Hahaha!
I also want to mention how great-full I am of my friends and family who give me so much support while I am here. I lean on my friends a lot, and they are truly angels.
To celebrate my third state, I think I will just start posting a bunch of pictures for you all until Chris gets out of yoga and calls me :) enjoy!
Tonight, I am staying at the Hikers Inn in Damascus. There are rooms in the home (kind of like a B&B, without the breakfast), and there is a hostel in a building behind the home. It's really nice. The bunkhouse has two bunk beds, and there is a separate private room with a queen bed. I am in the private room. As the trail goes on, I have noticed there are fewer woman still hiking. There are also fewer gentlemen...just mostly males, old and young, who have lost their manners. This is why I try to snag the private rooms! Hiking the AT has become a lot like what I think it would be like to live in a southern college frat house. Oh, the smells!! The hikers with some manners left tend to gravitate to the more expensive lodging (my room is $35. That is considered pricey for a hostel). For instance, last week I stayed at the Kincora hostel. Bob Peoples is the man who runs that place. He is a master trail man, and works a lot on the trail, including miles of re-routes. He is an amazing man who actually reminds me of Elmer Fudd. His hostel is a $5 suggested donation. With that price, you can expect to be bunking with some interesting fellas. It also doesn't bring in any income to keep the place very clean. The saving grace there is that no alcohol is aloud, so the rowdy crowd stays away. After a night there, I stayed in the Black Bear Resort to take my day off. It was a very basic hostel, but the cleanliness made a huge difference. It was $10. They also rent cabins for $50, and I hear they are nice.
A lot of people wonder about the hostels, so I hopes little explanations help. I really love getting to see all the different hostels I have. Even the not so cozy ones have given me great memories. I will never forget the Aquone cabin hostel! Most cozy ever!
Here is a picture of "chronic fatigue syndrome" I asked if he was opening a candy store...but he was just getting his next few days of food ready to hike. Hahaha!
I also want to mention how great-full I am of my friends and family who give me so much support while I am here. I lean on my friends a lot, and they are truly angels.
To celebrate my third state, I think I will just start posting a bunch of pictures for you all until Chris gets out of yoga and calls me :) enjoy!
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
So far, my day off has proved to do my body good. I will be much better from now on to listen to my body and slow down a bit. Yesterday was a great day back on trail. We hiked about 9 miles before making it to an awesome lake, Lake Watuga. It was a beautiful day, so we ended up spending almost 5 hours relaxing there. We made dinner at the lake before hiking a final 2.5 miles to an awesome site on the other side of the lake. We had the perfect lakeside view.
You can't tell in the dark picture, but I am roasting an awesome marshmallow to go with the awesome s'mores that my good friend Kelly gave me.
Have you ever heard a whippoorwill? Well, it has a cute little chirp, until you realize it likes to chirp at night...really loud. I was trying to sleep when one decided to do its chirpy business right in our camp. Earplugs went in!
A couple hours later, about a quarter to midnight, I had another visitor. A squirrel jumped right on my tent, and did a funny little dance, and then slid off my vestibule and ran away. It startled me awake, but turns out it may have been a good samaritan squirrel trying to tell me something. At that very moment, I heard Voltron say from his tent, "Lori, are you messing with the food bags?" As I told him no, I heard the noise he was hearing. Out come the earplugs, and I was definitely hearing some loud tree cracking noises.
There was a bear trying to steal our food bags which we had so carefully hung in a tree to keep him from stealing. How rude!
In the time that I debated on what to do, and had my tent zipper partly open, Voltron jumped out and started yelling. neither of us saw for sure, but the amount of noise it made running away, and all the grunting, I'm not so sure it wasn't more than one bear. Thanks to Voltron, our food was saved. The bear had broken the branch, a couple more tugs and it would have fallen down. The bear, or bears, never came back to our camp, but turns out after our camp, at least 2 other campsites were robbed. One guy had a bear eating spilled food right outside his tent, and two other guys lost their food bags which were also hung. I didn't sleep much the rest of the night!
So there you go. My first real bear adventure, but I am STILL yet to see a bear!
Have you ever heard a whippoorwill? Well, it has a cute little chirp, until you realize it likes to chirp at night...really loud. I was trying to sleep when one decided to do its chirpy business right in our camp. Earplugs went in!
A couple hours later, about a quarter to midnight, I had another visitor. A squirrel jumped right on my tent, and did a funny little dance, and then slid off my vestibule and ran away. It startled me awake, but turns out it may have been a good samaritan squirrel trying to tell me something. At that very moment, I heard Voltron say from his tent, "Lori, are you messing with the food bags?" As I told him no, I heard the noise he was hearing. Out come the earplugs, and I was definitely hearing some loud tree cracking noises.
There was a bear trying to steal our food bags which we had so carefully hung in a tree to keep him from stealing. How rude!
In the time that I debated on what to do, and had my tent zipper partly open, Voltron jumped out and started yelling. neither of us saw for sure, but the amount of noise it made running away, and all the grunting, I'm not so sure it wasn't more than one bear. Thanks to Voltron, our food was saved. The bear had broken the branch, a couple more tugs and it would have fallen down. The bear, or bears, never came back to our camp, but turns out after our camp, at least 2 other campsites were robbed. One guy had a bear eating spilled food right outside his tent, and two other guys lost their food bags which were also hung. I didn't sleep much the rest of the night!
So there you go. My first real bear adventure, but I am STILL yet to see a bear!
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