Day 55-56: 6/3-4/16 (Virtual AT 2020 Days 62-63)

We woke up very early on Friday, eager to complete the about 15 miles into Daleville as quickly as we could. The morning was foggy, but started warm, so we started sweating right away.

The first landmark on our trek into town was tinker cliffs, a half mile cliff walk with views back towards McAfee Knob and the ridge that we we had just spent the first part of the morning walking along. It was petty cool seeing what we had just walked. The rest of the morning was pretty much just hiking as fast as we safely could to get into town as quickly as we could. There were a few views, and way more climbs than we expected for a hike into town. In fact, we felt like we kept going uphill until about 2 miles out of town. It was a bit annoying. Finally, a bit after 11:30 am, we arrived in Daleville.

We couldn’t immediately check in, so we left our packs at the Howard Johnson, and walked down to the grocery store to do our resupply. We also grabbed some stuff for lunch, and of course some beers for the room. We were able to get into our room after we got back, so we ate lunch, did laundry, and showered, and it was all great. We relaxed for a bit, then headed back out to the outfitter to look at new boot options.

I tried on a bunch of boots and hiking shoes, but nothing was really feeling quite right. I think it was because we had just come off a 15 mile day, and my feet weren’t really up to the task of testing out footwear. I decided to sleep on it, since the next day would be a zero day, I could just come back. We then headed over to Three Pigs BBQ for dinner…which was excellent. We got some smoked chicken wings to start, then we each had a BBQ plate… one with pulled pork and a North Carolina style vinegar sauce, and the other was a Jerk pork. It was all really tasty. We even got some free banana pudding for being thru-hikers, and that free pudding had whipped cream and Nilla Wafers in it, so it was good.

For our zero day, we were actually pretty active. We ate some of the free breakfast at the hotel, and found out that there was a shuttle doing rounds all day to the Trail Days in Troutville. We grabbed a shuttle a bit before 11am, and we were in Troutville right away.

The Trail Days in Troutville was, I’m sure, much MUCH smaller than the one in Damascus, but that’s okay. There were a few vendors there including Merrell who makes the boots we’ve been wearing. There was a church with a both set up with a bunch of random hiker supplies for free. There was also a podiatrist who was doing free foot checks, which we took advantage of. She recommended some new inserts that we’ll be trying out.

We utilised the shuttle again to get back to the outfitter, where I tried on one last set of shoes that I had been thinking about the night before. I settled on the Merrell Moab Ventilator, a comfy shoe that I’ve worn before. We then went next door to the UPS store and shipped a few things home. Immediately after we were done with that, we hopped back on the shuttle and went back to trail days for a bit, chatted with the podiatrist one last time then visited the hidden beer garden.

We only had one at the beer garden because we wanted to get over to the brewery. We fully intended on walking the 2.5 or so miles, but luckily that shuttle was about to take off again, and was able to drop us off right at the end of the road that the brewery was on. Very nice of those guys!

The brewery is called Flying Mouse, and they’re a bit out of the way down a gravel road, pretty much halfway between Daleville and Troutville. It’s not a huge capacity brewery, but they’ve got a ton of space for expansion. The beers are all good. I especially enjoyed the refreshing pilsner, and the porter was also tasty. They happened to have a food truck while we were there, serving creole food. We had a gumbo and creole Mac and cheese with andouilli sausage. Again, all very good. We relaxed there for a while, and waited out some strong storms that passed through. When we decided the coast was clear, we did the 2.2 mile walk back to Daleville, stopping by a frozen yogurt place on our way back to the hotel. All in all, a pretty good zero day with less walking than we expected thanks to that shuttle.