We awoke this morning to the sound of a light rain on the aluminum roof of the Woods Hole Hostel. Of course we both silently toyed with the idea of zeroing, we knew that wouldn’t be in our best interest. We had to put some miles in. That didn’t stop us from getting a slow start though. We enjoyed some coffee and showers, and some bread and cheese for breakfast. Around 10am, after watching most of the other hikers wander off, we finally packed up our stuff and headed out.
We ended up doing about 19.6 miles today, which included a long ridge walk, a steep descent that brought us close to Pearisburgh, VA, a walk over a pretty busy highway bridge, finished up with a long, steady climb back up another ridge, where we actually hit the VA/WV border just after we passed the Rice Field Shelter. We’re camped out about a mile and a half north of that shelter. We hiked for a while with Starbucks, who slack- packed from the hostel down to Pearisburgh, where the hostel had dropped off her pack. We ran into her just when she was heading out of town, and we all hiked up together. There is a good little group here in camp tonight, mostly new faces for us, which is part of the fun of this whole trip.
It was a mostly good day, and the miles seemed to go by pretty quickly. Both of us are still toughing it out with regards to our feet. We’re making a push to Daleville where we’ll take a look at our footwear, and take a much needed zero day. I’m hoping that a day off will help us as much as they have in the past… We’ve just got to get there.
