Tonight I am staying at woods hole hostel at mile 625.5, where I’m currently swaying in a hammock. This hostel is known as one of the best on the trail and I was excited to visit. The hostel is located on a farm and uses produce for breakfast and dinner from the farm. Dinner was a three course meal and included pumpkin soup Thai noodle stir fry and cake, as well as bread and pesto. It was delicious and it was great to have organic food for a change. The place is rustic while also very clean and relaxing.

After Ryan and I left the station at mile 395, we had a spell of good weather. We averaged about 15 miles a day to Damascus, Virginia. The nice weather was a welcome change and we had a camp fire every night, I was glad that Ryan got to experience the camping aspect of the trail as well as the social and survival parts. The night before we got to Damascus Happy Thoughts caught up to us. She and her camera are the main reasons that I have so many photos this time and also improved quality. We entered into Virginia and got to Damascus the next day early afternoon and checked into the only hostel with availability, Crazy Larry’s. Larry lived up to his name although not in a particularly good way. Usually when someone calls themselves a name like “crazy” they are in on the joke, this didn’t seem to be the case with Larry. Within five minutes of talking to him we had been accused several times of trashing the place and warned about giving him a hard time of his marijuana usage. However, it was a good place to socialize and to be fair to the man, Larry brought us a jar of moonshine(hiker group photo pictured above). Ryan left the next day and headed back to Pennsylvania. I enjoyed introducing an old friend to my new way of life.

Happy thoughts and I zeroed in Damascus and moved hostels to the broken fiddle which was a much more relaxing establishment. I told the owner that they should change their name to “rehab from Crazy Larry’s”. We hiked out the day after and did 64 miles in 3 and 1/2 days to Marion. We ended up zeroing at a motel in Marion as we were both tired and Happy Thoughts had an issue with her foot. We planned to do 90 miles to woods hole in five days but two days in Happy thoughts’s foot problem persisted and she had to be shuttled to the nearest hostel to take a few days off as I continued onto Woods Hole. Tomorrow I will resupply in pearisburg, Virginia and head north to my next resupply stop, Daleville.

Wildlife sightings- I saw my first snake, what I believed to be a baby timber rattlesnake, then I saw two more nonvenomous snakes about a week later.

I’ve seen a few deer since I entered Virginia, one is pictured above.

I saw wild ponies(pictured above) in the Greyson highlands who were well accustomed to people.

Sweet Virginia by The Rolling Stones is one of my favorite songs and I’ve listened to it a few times a day since entering the state. We crossed state lines at mile 465.