4/30 We all woke up to the most glorious breakfast I have had on the trail. I had homemade monkey bread, biscuits and gravy, cinnamon rolls with peppermint icing, french toast, and so much more. After we got back on trail we came upon Jones Falls. It was so beautiful here and we ended up screwing around here for a bit before moving on to Mountaineer Shelter for the night.
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| Breakfast Spread at Mountain Harbour |
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| Jones Falls |
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| Some of the crew at Jones Falls |
5/1 We woke up and got on the trail at a good time. It was resupply day so we headed towards Black Bear Hostel. Our Plans were not to stay but we ended up staying there anyway. that night we watched Eurotrip in the common room. Big Spoon enjoyed it the most because he got to learn about all the stereotypes of what America thinks of other countries.
5/2 Such an easy day today besides Mount freaking pointless. I mean there was literally no point to it at all. I don't know what the trail maintainers were thinking when the made this part of the trail. When we got down the pointless mountain we came up on Watauga Lake. The lake was so beautiful that we had to take a nap on the picnic benches there. We found a campsite right on the lake about half a mile up on the trail. As more people arrived at the campsite we found out that one of the hikers had the dreaded norovirus. He pretty much quarantined himself after he found out he was sick.
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| Laurel Falls |
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| Family of ducks on Watauga Lake |
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| Watuaga Lake |
5/3 Today pretty much sucked. I was barely moving at all. Today wore me out. That is all.
5/4 The plan for the day was to camp 4miles before the town of Damascus. As the day went on we kept pushing out destination further and further. As we crossed the Tennessee/Virginia Border we decided to just hike the extra 1.8 miles into Damascus. That would make it a 27 mile day and I had only a package of pop tarts and nutella to eat today. We arrived in Damascus at about 8 pm. We went straight to the Blue Blaze Cafe. All 5 of us racked up a tab of $125, which is pretty damn ridiculous. We then hiked back out of the town to the trail north. Here we were being followed by a vicious predator. This predator ended up being a kitten. We named him AT cat and he watched over us as we cowboy camped 100ft up the trail.
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| State Line |
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| AT cat in action |
5/5 AT cat woke us all up, we packed up and headed back into town. We had breakfast at cowboys and the cashier there offered to do all of our laundry for free! It was a really hot day out so we headed down to the local swimming hole. We swam, did some bouldering, had some beer, it was pretty great. For lunch I had an entire pizza and walked up to The Place Hostel to set up my sleeping pad for the night. In celebration of Cinco de Mayo Southbound and I celebrated by drinking some lime-ritas and then going on a drunken resupply adventure at the local Food City. I also received my new debit card today!
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| Blu at the swimming hole |
5/6 We woke up and went to the Dairy King for breakfast. We decided that we would hike 15 miles today. Well noon came around and we still hadn't left town. We went to the local coffee shop for lunch and decided that we were probably only gonna make it 8 miles today. 3 hours later we were still sitting outside the closed coffee shop not doing anything at all. Big Spoon stopped by and said he was on his way to get ice cream. We all followed. We got there 10 min before closing time. 2 hours later we were still sitting outside the ice cream shop goofing off. Soon we decided that it was dinner time. I suggested that we go to the BBQ place across the street. We had dinner there and by the time we left it was dark outside. We ended up hiking 1/2 mile to a campsite and stayed the night there.
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| Southbound and I at dinner |
So far Damascus has been my favorite town I have stayed in. Everyone is so friendly and the community is just fantastic. I am really looking forward to coming back here in about a week for Trail Days!!
Happy Trails!!!
Lucas "Smokie" Varnadore
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