They say that Damascus can pull hikers in, making them stay longer than intended. Some hikers even stay indefinitely when they feel the pull hard enough.
We ended up not being any different, and stayed for three nights at the Hiker Inn in Damascus. For us it was the combination of a couple long days to get into town, some still sore bodies after the first zero, a bit of a sore throat on Friday morning, and the realization that our room was available for that one extra night.
We really enjoyed our time in Damascus, which sort of felt like the end of the first phase of our hike. On Thursday, we began our day by walking down to a cafe called Mojo for coffee and breakfast. We split an incredible cinnamon roll, and I got eggs, pancakes, bacon, and home fries, while Bear Bell had a bagel breakfast sandwich. It was all very good. After breakfast we wandered over to the post office and picked up some mail, then headed over to the outfitters (there are three in town) to peruse gear. I ended up replacing my sleeping pad at Adventure Damascus with a Big Agnes pad. It’s just a tad lighter than my old pad, but it’s much more comfortable.
After doing our gear shopping, Bear Bell took our stuff back to the Inn, and I swung by the barber shop and got a haircut. I can’t tell you how much better I feel with a haircut. With the days getting warmer, my hair was just getting annoying, so I needed to get rid of some of it. I didn’t shave though, just cleaned up some of the scraggly spots. We’ll see how this facial hair grows over the course of this hike. I also stopped by the library in town to take care of a bit of health insurance stuff on their actual desktop computers, which was easier than using my phone… even though the process for looking at my options was still pretty difficult. I think I’m all set now though.
In the afternoon we went to Bobo Mcfarlands for beers, wings, salad, and pizza. Everything was pretty good. In chatting with the bartender, it sounds like the town is still recovering from Trail Days. For those of you who don’t know, Trail Days is a big gathering of hikers, locals, gear reps, and just whomever in Damascus in early May. The event usually draws between 15 and 20 thousand people to the little town. As we were walking around, I couldn’t imagine that many people taking over the little town… a bunch of people told us we should’ve shuttled up or tried to get there, but it sounds a bit overwhelming. For the hikers that camp out in “tent city”, it’s apparently like a music festival without so much music, but still just a big party scene. I’m sure we’ll check out Trail Days some day, but I’m glad we got to see the quiet side of town.
After our early dinner on Thursday, we walked the mile out to Food City and took our time doing a resupply, slowly walking each aisle. We were kind of just killing time until close to 6pm, which just happened to be when the Damascus Brewery opened up, which also just happened to be across the street from the grocery store. What a coincidence.
We did get to the brewery a little early, actually right after the owner arrived to open up for the night. He kindly let us come in anyway. It’s a cool little brewery that just celebrated 3 years this past year. They brew a TON of different beers, but only have 8 on tap at any given time. We went with a flight of all 8. Eventually more people showed up, and we learned that you can get food delivered to the brewery (they don’t do food there). There’s also a few dart boards and Foosball to keep people entertained. We really enjoyed chatting with the owner, and stayed for an extra pint after we finished our flight.
We started our walk back to the Inn, but made a quick pit stop back at the grocery store for a six pack to bring back to the room. No more than 3 minutes into our walk back, a minivan pulls over, and a well dressed family asks if we want a ride back into town. It was only a bit over a mile, but we hopped in. We told them we were at the Hiker Inn, and they knew that it was “Paul’s place.” In chatting with them, they were on their way home from their daughter’s middle school graduation, and they live just off the trail right in town. It’s gestures like this that continually maintain my faith in humanity… that people are inherently good, and care about others, and it’s just the crazy people or the negative news that we hear about.
We slept well that second night in town… so well that we decided to stay for a third night, and and extra zero day. We really didn’t do anything on the second zero day… in fact we didn’t even leave the room until almost 3pm. We decided to just nap and rest our bodies all day.
We did check out the Old Mill, go back to the coffee shop, and pick up a few more items at one of the outfitters. We also had another meal at Hey Joe’s, where we saw Lumpy (from Standing Bear), and met a section hiker from PA.
We’ll be back on the trail tomorrow, rain or shine, but we now understand how people can get sucked into Damascus.
