A young couple and their adventures of hiking the Appalachian Trail
Trail Days!!! Damascus, VA 5/17/18 – 5/20/18
This weekend we had Trail Days, a big annual hiker festival, in the town of Damascus, Virginia. There were over 10,000 of us that came in for the event and took over their little town for a few days.
Lots of vendors were there including some of the big companies we buy gear from so they were able to fix/clean some of our gear. There was SO much good food, including a lot of free food that some of the churches provided for us. One Way Ministries has free coffee and snacks every morning and also had free charging stations, showers, laundry, haircuts, shuttles into town, and a chicken dinner they made for us. They were overwhelmingly generous and kind to all of us hikers!
With being at a big hiker event like this most hikers got off trail to come to this so we got to meet a lot of people we hiked with in the beginning that we hadn’t seen in awhile. A lot of people drop out at the beginning so it’s always exciting when we meet up with friends again and see they are still hiking.
The hiker parade was on Saturday! They have all the hikers line up in the street starting with the previous years till the current year of 2018. As we hike through the street people stand out along the street and spray all us stinky hikers with water guns and buckets of water.
The hiker parade!!
People spraying us dirty hikers with water
Our tramily (trail family)
This place was awesome! They had it all set up for us hikers to pamper our feet. We cleaned them, worked out the sore muscles, and gave them some extra care.
A small part of tent city
My pile of stuff to send home! We each sent over 5 lb of stuff home. So excited about lighter packs!
Also, we both got our trail names. Lance is Astro and I am Gourmet. Lance got his name because when he would introduce himself and say his name, if they didn’t understand the first time he would be like Lance like Lance Armstrong. The one time when he said that someone was like “oh yeah, like the astronaut” (no that was Neil Armstrong but yeah). People started referring to him as ‘the astronaut guy’ so he shortened it to Astro. I got my name because we were always cooking food that wasn’t typical hiker food like eggs, burritos, etc. So oftentimes when we would be cooking people would comment and be like “wow, your gourmet out here”…hence the name Gourmet.
I loved your post today. Funny info like trail names, tramily, foot pampering station. The food and fellowship must be so great. Oh and the pic of tent city! 🙂