Week 6 - 2022

WEEK SIX of HOBOS GOING SOBO IN THEIR OBOZ, the journey "in-tents"ifies ...

Waynesboro, VA to Buena Vista, VA - 55 miles, average 9 miles a day.   Total miles so far = 344

WHAT WE LEARNED THIS WEEK ON THE TRAIL:

• WHAT A WEEK!! So many ups and downs, but … THE VIEWS!!!!  Absolutely Smashing!! So far, this week has been my favorite as far as beauty, but I still wonder:

• Who said Virginia was going to be easy?!  And why is it that Pennsylvania is only noted for having rocks? Good golly, we have encountered so many rocks, it’s been rough and exhausting!  We’re so over this “rock-n-roll” stuff, give us “classical”smooth stuff for a while! 

• Great news!! We hit the 300-mile mark, our halfway point!! It’s all downhill from here! Hah, I wish! Seems to always be more uphill than downhill.  If you look at a map, we are headed south which is headed down (not up!) so what’s with that?!  Maps lie!

• Don’t make hotel reservations online while on the trail. While hurrying to secure a spot and hoping cell reception doesn’t quit, we inadvertently booked a smoking room.  We have nothing against smokers but since we don’t smoke, the room almost knocked us off over with the smell.  Makes me wonder though … how many people have we almost knocked over by our smell by being on trail for a week without a shower?!  I’m sure I really don’t want to know!    Anyway, we apologized for our mistake and got reassigned to a non-smoking room.

• I fell. And hard. This time my poles did not save me, actually they helped in my fall. Got stuck in the mud, I fell to my knees with enough force and weight on my back that I kept going and face planted in the ground.  It hurt!  My first thought was I had better get a bruise for how hard I hit and the second was, I hope no one just witnessed that.  No one as far as I could tell saw me do it, not even FROG, he saw me as I was back up on my knees.  As far as a bruise … check out the picture.

• My husband is a gymnast!  He has mastered the balance beam across a roaring stream.  I was so nervous for him I didn’t even get a picture so not to distract him lest he fall.   Me, I cheated. Took my hiking boots off, put on my crocs and walked through the stream.  I never was good at the balance beam, why test it now?

• Heard a new expression we had never heard before from a 20-something year old. “Punching above their weight” - she was referring to the Mexican restaurants in Virginia being so good, going above and beyond.  Ok, so maybe you’ve heard it said before - we had never heard that expression, maybe we need to get out more or at least hang out with the young crowd a time or two.

• We broke curfew. We had set up our tent on a mountain top and forced ourselves to stay awake long enough to see the sunset.  Normal bedtime for us is 7:00, we didn’t get to bed until 8:30!  But the sunset!  WOW! God was definitely “punching above His weight!!”

• I need to get the “good wife/silent partner” award this week. I kept my mouth shut when I REALLY didn’t want to!  That folks is what’s called a MIRACLE!  Okay, so here’s the scoop: We set out to walk 11 miles to complete the Shenandoah’s. No problem, I was good with that.  Then FROG says we’ll walk just one more mile and set up camp near a stream.  Ok, that sounded like a good plan.  Hmmm! First stream we come to both sides are on a hill, no flat spots anywhere. I am tired, my feet hurt but what can we do, we have to keep going.  There’s another stream coming up, there’s bound to be something he says … three streams and three miles later we finally find a flat spot as I shuffle in and collapse from pure exhaustion.  14 miles y’all!!  I know it wasn’t really his fault, how could he know, but gee whiz!  And to top it off, he tells me he could have walked another couple miles, now I really need that award because I could have surely smacked him and said a few choice words for saying that, but I was silent.

• We found the 1%. 99% of hikers you meet are such a friendly group of people. We approached a young group of gals sitting at a picnic table in the shelter, FROG makes a comment to them and not one person acknowledged our existence nor responded.  We felt like we were back in school approaching the cool kids table and because we weren’t one of them, we didn’t rate.  Like, whatever!!  So much for thinking we should hang with the younger crowd more.

• We love us some trail magic! It was a hot day, Memorial Day actually! And there by the road were ice cold drinks!  We, for sure, want to do this someday, to pay it forward.  We know how much it has meant to us.

• Crabtree Falls Campground!  The owner, AJ, is a one-man show (runs the place by himself) and did an amazing job in taking care of all our needs. We highly recommend this campground for either tenting, RVing or renting a cabin (which we did). Such a great location and very relaxing with no Wi-Fi or cell reception.

• A half mile down the road from the campground is Crabtree Falls. After taking a short slackpack day on the AT we went to see the falls, ahhh-mazing side trip!

• Our resupply food box never arrived at the campground.  After getting over the shock of that (it’s never happened before), I made a call to Beth who traced our box to find out they delivered it to a post office 30 minutes away instead of making a delivery to the campground. AJ was kind enough to drive us there to retrieve. Heaven forbid we have to go without food!  We just might wizzle away to nothing. Hah!  Maybe the case with FROG but not for me!

• Guess what we saw at the campground our first night?  At first, I thought it was a big black dog but nope! A black bear cub! I didn’t have time to get a picture- once he saw us and it registered with us that it was a bear, he was gone. It was the cutest thing - he never came back the next two nights we were there. It’s probably a good thing, we really don’t want mama bear coming around.

• We must have been exhausted! We took a zero day (after a really hard day of rocks!) in the cabin and didn’t wake up until 10:00 am!  And if I’m being honest, we had to make ourselves get up!

• I get car sick on very windy roads through the mountains. Never knew that.  Not a fun thing to find out when someone is kind enough to give you a ride and you’re sweating and feeling sick to your stomach, holding your mouth as you’re praying to God not to let you hurl in the backseat of their truck.  Happy to report God answered my prayer.

• What a full week, I can’t even imagine how WEEK SEVEN could ever top this one!

• Thanks so much for following our journey, blessings as you journey through your week.  All y’all are the best!