We woke up in our Jackson TN motel room, both of us itching and unable to sleep, the air damp. The chips that had been left out were soggy. I cracked the window for air. It was dark outside. What came in couldn’t have been under 70 degrees. I decided to make some breakfast on the stove but the matches would not light.
Yup, we were barely across the Mississippi River, but it was unmistakable: we were back in the East. And the South. The stickiness could not be denied. I wonder if anyone transitions successfully back to the East Coast after more than a couple months on the West.
Granted, our first full day back in Virginia was a crisp 70s day with incredible visibility.
But until the unsettled weather cleared, the way back was uncomfortable, despite the foliage. Allergies I had forgotten I had arose to life. In some places the rain was the first real rain of the summer and woke up all sorts of nasty moulds.
After Las Vegas, profiled in great detail in the last entry, we wild-camped at Lake Foss, a large reservoir 100 W of Oklahoma City where I had camped on my way out West in May 2003. On the grass under a black locust, it was the best night's sleep both of us had on the trip, and perhaps Morgan as well. We pierced the curtain of moisture around Oklehoma City, where the range ends and the trees really begin. In Seminole, 30 miles east of OK City, we popped into the Jasmine Moran Children's Museum 10 miles off the interstate which turned into an all-afternoon gig. We patronized a Super 8 Motel near Fort Smith, Arkansas. Continued across the state, which this time seemed redneck to an extreme. Meth zombies with long white beards is perhaps more apt. Tennessee was prety much indistinguishable from Virginia, the steep grades started west of Knoxville, then eased again. Tent-camped within the town limits of peaceful, good little Damascus, Virginia, on Thursday night, and arrived back at Smith Mountain Lake the next afternoon.
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Crisp and in the 70's on your first day in VA. Now it looks like it is going to rain for several months to make up for the several months, it seems, of no rain. We do need it very much, so it is a good thing. Oddly enough when you tented in Damascus I was sheltering not to far on a hike out of Grayson Highlands. We could have been on I-81 headed north at the same time. Had I not stopped to fuel up at the Flying J at Fort Chiswell about two on that Friday, we could have played leap frog north. Anyway it was a good three night four day hike in perfect and colorful weather.
I wonder where you tented in the town of Damascus, now that it is no longer the friendliest town on the AT. For the past few years the former tent sites in town are all posted with "No Camping" signs. The only place available is the lawn of the church hostel, especially this time of year when it is converted into a haunted house for Halloween, and also closed to hiker use. Even the shelter along Beaverdam or Laurel creek is posted now. :-( About three years ago the hikers were pushed out of town and the park, where they used to be able to pitch tents, was turned over to vendors. That took the fun out of Trail Days, and I haven't gone since. There is talk that the Trail Days hosted in Damascus will possibly relocate to a small town in NC, also on the AT. Don't know if you know, but for the future, there is a campground not far from Damascus towards Shady Valley at Backbone Rock.
Short as the exposure was to your next blog entry from the lake we were able to read it, before censors got you to delete it. :-) No surprise, no comment.
I made an exception to "if it plays it stays" and took the post down not because of censors but because I don't want to impact my wife's relationship with her sister-in-law. (And it wasn't that well written anyway.)Let TTT post something somewhere if she sees fit. I'm not that codependent that I have to be just as annoyed as my wife. I will say this: Kai gets no help from her husband as far as things around the house go, so there's not much sense laying anything more at her door.
Anyway, just hope I didn't erase any comments. I forgot to look if there were any right before I did the deletion.
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