Project Eveningland

4/14/2023 Friday

We woke to see rains outside our motel window. We delayed leaving until shortly before nine, when it tapered off. The shuttler had barely charged us anything last night and said that we could just call him whenever we wanted to depart this morning because he only lives 15 minutes away.

We drove back up to Rt. 52, and I grabbed a traditional 9:30AM cheeseburger at Brushy Mountain Outpost. We waited for our food with Perfect and Zandry, the latter of whom was digging into a cheeseburger, fries, and a full breakfast platter with some hefty looking sausage gravy. I love Brushy, for its oddness if nothing else, but there’s something about that place that makes me want to scrub deep in the corners.

After a short road walk—to get us across a small bridge over an enormous highway—we started a climb up to a long, dry ridge. Once atop it, the walk turns mostly level with divinely soft, even tread.

Spring is moving fast now. There’re maples unfurling, the young leaves a tender green and red. It has been so long since I started this journey that I rather forgot spring was on the way. At some point I stopped waiting. But now Wedge says “hurry” to the leaves because he wants shade. I feel the same way, but I keep thinking of those photos from Trip’s and my journey on the Sheltowee Trace last June. The foliage in those pictures seems unreal, and beautiful, but I remember how damn uncomfortable we were in the heat and humidity of June in Kentucky’s low country. It makes me cautious to wish for summer. I’ll attach an example photo.

We reached mile 600 today! It was a long wait to take a selfie at the little rocks spelling out “600.” There was only one other person, and it was Wedge, my hiking partner, and the only other human in sight. Still, a frustrating wait.

Toward the early afternoon, some isolated storms passed over. I felt them coming in my lucky ankle. I got maybe 15 minutes of light sprinkles. There was a cooler with some sodas at the VA-611 trailhead. I had a small Sprite; Wedge had some Cokes. My blood sugar went up and then came crashing down. Had to throw 1000 calories at my body to even things out.

The hostel—Weary Feet—picked us up just after four. We could have walked five more miles and made it directly to the hostel, but an 18 mile day finishing with a big climb would probably have beat us up enough to have to take the day off tomorrow anyway. So we did 13 today, shuttled in from a closer trailhead, and we will go back and do those last five miles to the hostel tomorrow morning. We convinced Gladiator, who was resting at the pickup point, to join us. He’s part of a pair of young brothers hiking together. His older brother was already at the hostel. Gladiator had sat himself on a footbridge next to the pickup point (really the only place to sit) and leaned himself against his pack. He looked beat but was at pains to get up and allow us to cross the bridge. As we got closer Wedge told him to relax and “stay right where you’re at” because we were waiting on a ride and didn’t need to cross the bridge. Gladiator and his brother Hayden have matching beards. We stayed with them at the alpaca farm after our evening with The Man with the Brick.

Weary Feet is in a homey old farmhouse. They serve dinner and breakfast! The extremely kind woman running the place served me a dinner of pork tenderloin and beans and mashed potatoes. Wedge wants to stay here and slackpack tomorrow and Sunday. It’s not going to be hard to convince me.

The forest is busy readying itself for what’s to come. But what is to come? What adventures await?