Virginia is for Lovers, so natuarlly we are going!

little Known Facts:

1.    There is a bar in London that sells vaporized vodka, which is inhaled instead of sipped.

2.    In the White House, there are 13,092 knives, forks, and spoons.

3.    Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

Today was my ‘Getting Ready’ day. My next post should be from somewhere in Virginia.

Virginia is a beautiful state. We hiked 544 miles through Virginia. Some of our worst days and some of the most beautiful views.  Hiking the Shenandoah’s was an easy and beautiful hike. Not much mountain climbing. Once we were high we stayed high. It was what we called Ridge running.

We had two examples close encounters with deer.  They still make us smile. Once Sherry pointed to the side of the trail and we laughed as a big Doe, just lay there and watched the humans walk by, like it was her entertainment.  Then once on a very narrow trail Sherry met a HUGE Buck. He was walking toward her. She asked what she should do?  I bravely said (from behind her), “Just keep on walking we cannot get off the trail!” The underbrush was very thick.

He kept walking nonchalantly toward us and at about 20 feet seemed to have springs in his legs. He appeared to jump straight up (Like we have seen mountain goats do in the northwest.) and to his right into the brush and was gone. It looked like he jumped at least eight feet straight up in the air. It was really a graceful leap.

The bad time was the day after we forded a creek about four times and I dried Sherry boots over a camp fire.  They shrunk (or something) and ruined her heels the next day. She got so she could not walk. We stopped at a nice place and made camp. The next day she was no better. Two hikers ‘Tin Man and Godiva’ we had met earlier in Damascus passed.  Tin Man gave Sherry some 800mg Vitamin I.  That is when we learned that on the trail Vitamin I is ‘Ibuprofen’.  ;-)

We stayed at that site about 4-5 days until we were about to run out of food and made it down the mountain and called for a shuttle to pick us up.  The shuttle driver and his wife were nice folk but like to have never found us. But all ended well and Sherry got some rest and recuperated.

Nite Shipslog

                                  1964 T-Bird