This morning, we went to church in Waynesboro, Virginia. Waynesboro is where the northern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway meets the southern end of the Sky Line Drive. The two roads are very similar, as they both drive along a mountain ridge with many opportunities to stop and check out the mountain views.
But the Sky Line Drive is in the Shenandoah National Park. That means it would cost $25 to enter if we didn't have our national park pass. That probably keeps the traffic down, even on a weekend afternoon.
He started this journey on a whim, telling his girl friend that he would probably only last three days, or maybe he would be gone for as long as three weeks. He had never hiked before, and he had never set up a tent. Now he is here, three months later and still going strong. He was smiling as he described his journey that has stretched to 900 miles so far. He summed it up by saying that it has restored his faith in the goodness of humanity. He has already passed many of these Appalachian Trail concrete posts, marked with the A and T welded together. But he has many more miles to go if he makes it to the end.
That hiker's lack of preparation is so different than another AT hiker we met five years ago. She was hiking daily with her 40-pound pack to get herself ready a year in advance. She was testing her gear to make sure she had all the right combination of cooking and sleeping equipment with the least weight. She was breaking in new hiking boots, then putting them away to be delivered to her at different parts of the trail. We met her in 2017 and hiked with her two different days. Then we watched her progress in the spring of 2018 when she left from the southern end of the trail in Georgia. She was planning to hike around 15 miles per day before setting up camp in one of the cleared areas along the AT each night. But not too long into her journey, she developed a stress fracture in her foot and couldn't continue. All that preparation, and her body ended her through-hike!
We met our second AT through-hiker of the day about a half-mile later. He was snacking on skittles and poptarts--two easy-to-carry foods that don't melt and provide lots of calories for hiking all day. You could tell that he was also hungry for conversation, as he told us lots of stories of his journey so far. He stopped with us as we got to the summit of Black Rock on our short hike today.
This second hiker started close to a month earlier than the first guy, but his journey has been tougher. His feet also complained about the constant hiking, and he has been suffering from plantar fasciitis since about mile 200. Since both our hikers will cross the 900-mile mark today, that's hiking for 700 miles with constant foot pain. He's tried different shoes and different insoles, but still every step is painful. All the exercise and limited diet will cause hikers to lose weight quickly, and that caused him to develop gall stones. He had to stop long enough to have the non-invasive surgery to have them removed, and he was on the trail the next day.
The third strike came just this morning, when he found a tick on his leg. He's not afraid of the five bears he has seen so far, but the threat of developing lyme disease is frightening. He is thinking that a trip to urgent care to get antibiotics might have to happen in the next couple days. From all the details we know about his situation, you know that he was hungry to talk to someone. These two hikers are behind the pack of most of the through-hikers on this long journey, so they don't have as many conversation possibilities with fellow through-hikers. Those 15-mile-days in this green tunnel of trees can be lonely.
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