Week 9 - 2022

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

Pearisburg, VA - 41 miles, average 10+ miles a day.   Total miles so far = 500 miles!  80 miles left!

WHAT WE LEARNED THIS WEEK ON THE TRAIL:

• You crave what you’re told you can’t have.  (And I’m not talking hamburgers and French fries this time!)   It’s like being on a diet and you’ve cut out certain foods, all you think about and crave are those foods you can’t eat. Same thing happened with our water - we had to conserve what water we had left for the next day’s journey so of course that is all we could think about was how thirsty and in need of water we were but we knew we couldn’t have.  Ugh!  Due to our water shortage…

• Sometimes you have no choice but to go with Plan B.  For our health and safety due to the high temperatures and lack of water on the trail, we had to cut 20 miles off the trail this week. We were approaching a section of the trail that had no water available to drink. Lack of rain has dried our water sources. Guess I shouldn’t have complained so much about the rain when we had it.

• We hit the 500 mile marker!  What a milestone!! We are so close now!!!!  We anticipate a finish of July 5 or 6.

• Hikers who hike the whole trail (2190 miles) are called thru-hikers, I kid with Brad that in 80 miles we will be thru hikers too - we will be through hiking!! 

• June 21 is officially “hike naked day” for hikers.  NO, of course we did not participate, remember we are rule breakers.  We are so thankful we didn’t see many hikers that day and the ones we did see were fully clothed.  I  was worried about the possibility of seeing other hikers approaching naked and how we were going to control our eyes from wandering, if you know what I mean.  Would have been AWKWARD!!

• We passed the largest and oldest oak tree on the AT, Keffer Oak. Estimated to be 300 years old. It is massive. Hopefully you can get some idea by the pictures.  Quite amazing!

• For a mile stretch we passed dozens of huge stone cairns built by early farmers, stones that were cleared from grazing areas.  My suggestion is that they do this for the whole trail and eliminate all those rocks we had to walk and climb over! 

• Don’t forget you have your insect head net on when you need to spit. Otherwise, you will be carrying it along with you! Eww!

• I love my husband but he stinks!  Reeks is more like it!  He gave me a hug and woah! Knocked my socks right off! I  of course told him of his situation, he turns to me and says “I hate to break this to you but you reek as well!!”  Oh! My! Goodness!  Not what a woman wants to hear!  I am so sorry to those who had to endure when we got off trail.

• We’ve seen some beautiful views of the countryside. I look around at the homes we see from the top of the mountain and can’t help but wonder … how many of them hiked up here to see the view or are they content in just being the view?  Just curious.

• We intentionally left our ATM card at home so not to lose it or worse case, get stolen, but it would have been a good idea before we left home to know what our credit card PIN number was so when we got low on cash we could easily get more money.  What a hassle! A local bank took pity on us and came to our rescue.

• After 59 days of successfully using his Croc as a weight to throw the rope over a tree limb for the bear hang, the Croc and rope got stuck up in a tree. I mean really stuck!  I had myself one mad hiking partner stomping around with only one shoe on!  Neither one of us could figure out how to get it and ended up making the situation worse.  We are thankful that along came another hiker, Ole B, to the rescue.  He said he was king of screw-ups so he knew what to do. And he did.  No more Croc throwing for us. He showed us a better technique!  You know those dreaded stones … they come in pretty handy for this!

• Our book editing is DONE!  Back to the publisher on Monday for the next step, book design. Yay!

• We’ve enjoyed our stay at the Plaza Motel in Pearisburg. Linda, the manager is the absolute BEST and took excellent care of us and our needs.  Next door was a fabulous Mexican restaurant (definitely punching above their weight) and a Dairy Queen - yes, we had a blizzard every night.  Oink, oink!

• Now, it’s time to move on … see you in a week!  God’s very best to all y’all!