Damascus, VA to Atkins, VA 5/21/18 – 5/27/18

Getting back into hiking after taking so many zero days at trail days was a bit of an adjustment. The first few days we didn’t do much more than 10 miles and kinda took it easy. So far the terrain in Virginia is pretty nice too…definitely not flat but a lot flattER than some of the other states we went through.

Monday morning we had just started out and only hiked a few miles and it started raining so since we just came out of town with clean dry clothes we decided to set up the tent quick and wait it out. It rained for about half the day so by 4:30 we had only hiked 4 miles so we decided to hike till we feel like stopping. We stopped at the next shelter for dinner and ended up doing some night hiking to get a few extra miles in. Night hiking was great and not too “scary” but when we got close to where we were planning to camp we did see a pair of glowing eyes that were big enough and set apart far enough that you could tell it was something pretty big. It felt a little scary and that’s when all the scary “hiker stories” come to mind but fortunately it just turned out to be a deer that was curious.

First time night hiking!

We went through Grayson Highlands on Wednesday which has probably been one of my favorite parts of the trail so far with all the wild ponies and wildlife. The ponies were surprisingly tame and would let us come up and pet them and would try to lick the salt off our arms and legs. There were even a few cute baby ponies that were sooo adorable.

Here’s a few more pictures from the past few days…..

We passed the 500 mile mark!!

We passed by a few of these too in the Grayson Highlands…as intimidating as those big horns look, they fortunately ignored us and let us pass through.

Lance got new shoes! He had over 650 miles on the old ones so it was definitely time for an upgrade.

This past week Lance had poison ivy pretty bad which made hiking kind of miserable for him. There is so much poison ivy out here and we try to be careful but it’s almost impossible to totally avoid. He found that putting Jewelweed on helped a lot.

Jewelweed plants he would crush up and get the juice out of it to put on his poison.

Lance got a fishing pole for the trail so when we come to nice streams and ponds, he can go fishing. He even caught two cute little bluegills!