Appalachian Trail SOBO Day 93 – Creeping to Damascus
27th October 2023
Thomas Knob Shelter (1699.3) - Campsite (1721.9)
Daily miles: 22.6
Total miles: 1723.6
It was a chilly night. The wind blew all night long but it was still about 10°C / 50°F which isn’t that cold, but the wind made it feel colder. It did feel like it warmed up a little overnight but the wind didn’t let up much. My tent was gently flapping all night long which sometimes sounded like rain but thankfully it wasn’t rain.
Sunrise
The morning was beautiful and after a trip to the privy I left camp around 07:45am.
Another day another privy
Inside the privy
I had a lot of fluid to deal with this morning, my eyes were so swollen and every time I squeezed them shut they oozed with fluid. It was hard to see for the first part of the day. The Benadryl did not work!
Soaking it all in
Constant eye ooze
It was beautiful though with the sunrise and open meadows. There were a few forest sections but the trees were really short so it felt much more open than usual. I almost went the wrong way and started walking out into the open meadow before realising the trail took a hard right into the trees.
I came down to the road where there was a privy and a trash can and I dumped out all my trash. Professor caught up to me, then Cal, Toe, Jet and Howard arrived and we started hiking uphill so I went at the back. But they all stopped for water so I ended up hiking behind Professor for a while and we had a nice chat. The trail is kind of intense today because there are so many thick leaves on the trail and it’s covering up all the trip hazards so we are tripping a lot. It’s also really hard to have a conversation because the crunching of the leaves is so loud. They were beautiful colours today though.
Through the tall grasses
Can’t get enough of these views
This was actually the wrong way, but it was worth it
The right was was into the trees
Such a beautiful morning
Pit stop featuring 2 of the hiker holy trinity
We came to a road crossing and this guy starts yelling at us. “Hey are you thru hikers? Do you need anything?”
Um, no we are ok thanks.
“I have soda”.
Oh, well this changes things – I will definitely have a soda!
So Professor and I go over there and I get a Ginger Ale and he has beer too so gradually all the others arrive and we end up being there for over 2 hours. The guy is cool and he normally does trail magic for the NOBOs but doing it for SOBOs is hard because there aren’t so many of them, but he got lucky today with 11 of us. His trail name is Gun Runner and he has a great story behind it. He offers us snacks and to charge our phones and he said don’t anybody leave here with any trash.
Toe enjoying sitting with all her friends
Toe also never cleans her pot!
Trail magic from Gun Runner
Safety and Sidequest arrived just as we were all packing up to leave, they go slow in the mornings.
So by 1pm we had managed 6.6 miles which wasn’t part of the plan today! We carried on and walked through more beautiful open meadows and then started on the quite long descent, crunching through the leaves and chatting in a hiker train, until we got to the junction with the Virginia Creeper Trail which runs parallel to the AT for a lot of the time, but it’s wide and not full of hidden rocks and tree roots because it’s a bike trail, so we planned to take that because we had paid our dues with how many time we had all tripped and stumbled today.
Pow
May Queen
The best kind of trail
Hikers on big rocks
It’s called fashun
Hiker train
Me and my old pal Professor
Just like the old days
We stop just before the junction a collect water from the creek and wait until we had everyone (apart from Safety and Sidequest who are behind).
The Creeper Trail is so nice, and being a Friday after 4:30pm it was pretty quiet. We could all walk side by side and we could all walk with our heads up and not staring at the ground. The trail followed the creek the whole way and was very scenic.
On to the Virginia Creeper Trail
Runs parallel to the AT but doesn’t have rocks to trip over
Best decision ever
I hiked with Jet and had my first proper conversation with him which was nice. We came to a cafe which we had heard about and walked up to it but it looked closed. We were walking away when a lady came out and said she could serve us drinks and ice cream if we were interested and she unlocked the bathrooms for us too. That was so nice of them as they were clearly packing up and cleaning. So we all got ice creams and had a little sit at the picnic table.
Hellbenders cafe
Loading up with sugar
It was now 6:10pm and we had 7 miles to Damascus and there was some debate over going all the way to town to go and get food and drinks and then coming back out to the trail to camp, but realistically that was never going to happen so we ended up stopping at the original campsite I had scoped out for today and we made it there just as it was getting dark so no need for night hiking.
It was unusually warm too, especially as it turned very cold just after we left the cafe and I was hiking with my fleece on, but as we were setting up camp I got too hot which was very strange!
Rabbit Foot was already there with his tent set up and we saw him and he said he was feeling really rough, a headache he can’t shake and feeling ill.
We all sat around and ate dinner and it was so much more of a pleasant experience than last night. The water boiled quickly and the food actually stayed hot without the 30mph winds blowing through camp!
