The Road to Damascus

No, not the biblical Damascus where Saul became Paul ... I'm talking about Damascus, Virginia, which is where Tim and I left a car this evening, and where we will eventually end up after hiking north for a week on the Appalachian Trail.

After studying up on the weather forecast all week, it looks like temps will be in the 20's at night and up to the high 40's in the daytime. And no thunderstorms predicted! Woot! So guess who got to come along? Yep, Buster. This will be his first long-distance trek on the AT. If there had been any chance of thunderstorms I would've had to leave him home, since he is deathly afraid of those. He is carrying a small pack which contains his food for the week, two collapsible dog dishes, and about 20 ounces of water. He is rarin' to go. I took this photo of the noble beast taking in a nice deep breath of mountain air.

That red house you see in the background is Mountain Harbour, the same hiker hostel where Rob and Tim and I stayed on the eve of our last big hike in May. Last time we did a southbound segment, and this time we're starting at the same spot but heading north instead. They're very pet-friendly here, as you can see from the treats that were on their shelf.

Also on the shelf here is a "hiker box," which is a common thing to find at a hiker hostel. It's just a big huge box full of all kinds of stuff — food, gear, fuel, maps — and you can take anything you want. Hikers leave whatever they're not going to use, and they take anything that might be helpful to them. How cool is that! Obamanomics, trail-style. Love it.

There are two other guys staying here tonight. One is Ben Davis, an elite athlete who is running (not hiking, but running) the entire AT in 65 days to raise awareness for ALS (see his website here). Sixty-five days!! I think the current speed record is something like 61 days, but to put that in perspective, most thru hikers take at least six months to finish the whole thing. Ben's support person, Rick Cheever, is here too... he meets Ben at specific points along the trail each day and provides food and other resupply items. Right now it's about 8:30 at night, and Rick told us that Ben started running at 2:30 this morning (!!), and he's expecting him to roll in about 11:30 tonight, for a total distance today of 54 miles. Unbelievable.

There was lots of rain all day today on our drive down, but that's supposed to go away overnight and give way to clearer skies for the week. I'm pretty excited.