Today's miles 10.4. AT miles 467.6
A much milder day, it was forecast for rain this morning but we never really got any, just a couple of very light showers first thing which was a bonus. We left camp just after nine and walked with Iron Man and Extra Miles for a while, both great guys and good company. They walk a bit faster than us so they went on ahead after a while.
It was an easy 10 miles this morning, mainly downhill, just a few small ups and the snow had just about all gone which also made walking easier. We crossed the Tennessee/Virginia state line today, we are now in Virginia, our fourth state. Virginia state has the longest section of the AT trail, about a quarter of the whole trail runs just through Virginia. American hikers are often known to get the 'Virginia Blues' because it takes so long to get to the next state. We're not really counting the states so hopefully that won't apply to us.
We reached Damascus just after 12:30 passing its AT 'welcome' sign. Damascus is a very hiker friendly town and in mid May has a huge hiker festival over a few days called 'Trail Days'. Lots of hikers old and current attend. Unfortunately we probably won't be able to come back for it as we'll be too far down (or up) the trail by then. We will need to be well past the half way mark by mid May to be on schedule for finishing before our visa runs out. We are taking another zero day tomorrow in Damascus. One, because we had originally planned to anyway and two, because its forecast rain and possibly more snow all day tomorrow.
We are staying at the Hikers Inn in a private room, a great hostel owned by Lee and Paul (Skink), a Belgium guy and an ex 2010 thru hiker. Iron Man and Extra Miles are here too as well as Meeple and Odysseus. They do a laundry service so we handed over our laundry basket of smelly clothes. Once showered and changed we headed out for some lunch to the Blue Blaze cafe. A big place but we were the only ones in there, apart from Iron Man getting a takeaway pizza. They were doing lots of renovations getting ready for Trail Days. Good food though, we had a side salad and a Blue Blaze burger and fries. Nigel tried three of their beers, then had to have an afternoon nap!
The Germans arrived about 6pm, it was great that they made it. Once they'd got showered the three of them, Iron Man, Extra Miles and ourselves all went out together to the Blue Blaze cafe for dinner. We had a lovely evening with good company, a great group of trail friends. We headed back to our hostel about half past nine, a late night for us all!
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