Those of you who are just here for the beard? Come back in 3 or 4 weeks. There’s been an accident. It involved some shears over at Eula’s Hairstyling in Damascus, Virginia. [Side note for my software engineer friends: how cool is the name EULA, right?!]

That’s right, I’m in Virginia! Only 10 more states to go. Plus… Virginia. It has a longer stretch of trail than 7 of the other states combined. It’s a solid 25% of the entire trail, so we’ll be here for the rest of winter and well into spring. We’ll have a new beard by then. A 100% Virginian beard. My father grew up in this state, and I doubt he’s ever spent enough time here as an adult to grow a 100% Virginian beard. [Cue fact-checkers!]

My resupply box had a little something extra this week: a gift from my ceramic artist sister-in-law! I forgot to take a picture of the reverse side, but the back says “AT 2025.” I love it!! It’s attached to the front of my water bottle holder on my backpack shoulder strap. So you’ll see it in pretty much all future hiking selfies. 😍 Thanks, Becca!

What else did I do with my rainy zero day in Damascus? My hostel host, Lady Di, spends a lot of time knitting, has an old wooden spinner, and was watching a YouTube video about dyeing wool. [No, I swear this has nothing to do with my former beard. Let’s move on!] So I knew we’d have to spend a few hours watching my Migratory Pebbles adventure buddy Maurice’s Dreaming Robots Electric Eel Wheel wool spinner videos, and drum carder videos, and review videos, etc. Lady Di is a die-hard old-school manual spinner, but I could tell she was warming up to the idea, since she couldn’t stop watching more videos of Moe and his fiber-manipulating inventions!

In other news, I “aqua-blazed” past the one and only remaining post-Helene impassable section of trail a few days ago. This was made possible by Jim at Boots Off Hostel who hooked me up with a kayak, and collected me at the other end of Lake Watauga, and delivered me and my pack to the next trailhead. Many days on the trail blend together. This one never will!

Now I’ve got a solid 5 days of hiking before my next resupply box arrives (thanks, Bae!) at an alpaca farm. And it’s going to get real cold: back-to-back nights this weekend in the mid-teens. That’s January weather, but it’ll be March. I’m not excited about it, but I’m sure by the end of Virginia I’ll be nostalgic about sub-20° temperatures. (Until I hit them again in New England in June.) My face is going to be cold without that beard…

Let me bring you up to speed.

If you’re following along on a map, you can put a dot at Devil’s Fork Gap, NOBO mile 311.5. I crossed the 300 mile mark today after 4 weeks! So I guess I’m averaging a little better than 75 miles per week. I expected to be doing more like 100, but maybe that’ll happen once spring comes and I can swap out some of my winter gear?

People-wise I’m on my own again. I had a blast making it through Great Smoky Mountain National Park with Metro and E.T. in 5 days and 5 nights. Metro and I planned to make the traverse together for safety as much as keeping the Green Dragon Hostel party going. It just so happened that E.T. was also staying at the Fontana Dam “Hilton” (fancy shelter with hot showers and phone chargers) our first night, so we became a trio. E.T. left his phone home, so we’ll never intentionally coordinate like Metro and I did. But no doubt we’ll continue stumbling into each other the whole way north. Each time it’s a cause for celebration! (The one day we notably didn’t run into each other was the day we both started on January 17. He started a couple hours after me, and I stayed about half a day ahead of him for the first week!) With all that said, I set out to hike this trail alone, and I continue to want a solitary experience, but it sure is nice to have that me-time interrupted on occasion by running into my new friends. We had an epic pizza party at Standing Bear Farm the day we exited the Smokies, courtesy of Atypical Hiker trucking us in pizzas from Mellow Mushroom in Asheville. And then we went our separate ways.

Health-wise I’m feeling great. The more heavily I’m weighed down (e.g. right after a food resupply, and before drinking my 3 liters of water), and the steeper the elevation changes, the more likely my knees will be the weakest link. But I carry ibuprofen, which seems to primarily have a mental effect. Just knowing I have it does wonders, and I’ve only used 4 pills on 3 different days over the last 2 weeks. So I consider that issue resolved. Besides the knees, my ankles feel pretty beat up by the end of each day, but they always bounce back. Also, the skin on my hips gets destroyed by my heavy pack riding on them, but to me that beats my shoulders getting sore.

Food-wise I’ve been running a surplus. I’ve been giving bits and pieces away to fellow hikers and hostel owners. Everyone seems to really like my homemade trail mix, Luscious Loot™️. And instead of eating 2000 calories of it daily, I’ve only been able to eat half of that. So I’ll be cutting back to 3 bags per resupply instead of 5. Regardless, I’m still gaining weight, as my 5000+ kcal per day of packed food has been supplemented at least once weekly by an in-town binge of everything I see. Let there be no worries of me wasting away and losing my protective insulating layer!

Weather-wise it’s been hit and miss. Georgia and North Carolina, up to around Wayah Gap, were snowy and icy (requiring my microSpikes) and often super uncomfortably cold. The most uncomfortable part was always my hands. Feet, head, and core seem to be under control at all times. But my poor circulation leaves my hands wishing for a better solution when it’s below freezing out. Which over these 4 weeks has been at least part of most days! Not in the Smokies, where we lucked out with unseasonably warm weather. But it also rained or even thunder-stormed most of those days. I had to take a zero on Wednesday this week due to heavy rain, already saturated soil, and high winds. That’s a perfect combination for iffy trees to give up and fall down on you while hiking. The same is forecast for tomorrow, and possibly Sunday, too, it seems now? That’s followed by a bunch of super cold nights next week, which I’m not looking forward to, but at least I’m equipped for them. (I have to admit it was annoying to drag my -5°F sleep system through the Smokies only to sweat in the summer-like temps!) I wonder if I’ll need to put the microSpikes back on next week, too?

Logistics-wise, I’m really kept on my toes trying to plan when it’s safe to be outdoors, when a hostel is warranted, what to do when there is no hostel option, when and where to ship my food resupply boxes, how to keep my devices charged up, and planning most of this while I’m somewhere with any measure of Internet access. I get a single bar of cellular about 33% of the time on the trail, but frequently I don’t have any signal at the shelter or campsite I choose. The logistics can really wipe me out mentally as much as the physical hiking does. (So I’ve been sleeping great!) Jessica has been a saint getting my resupply boxes shipped out quickly so I don’t go hungry. ❤️ Speaking of which, I somehow have to combine the weather forecasts, the trail map, the hostel availability, and my current food supply, and translate that into a location for Jessica to ship out my next box. Plus it’s a post office holiday on Monday. I just want to sleep, though! And no doubt so does Jessica on a Saturday morning! Oh, well. I won’t starve.

I leave you with some more Luscious cameos in Metro’s videos. At this point, 4 weeks in, I can say with confidence that I won’t be making daily videos, or possibly any videos. I clearly can’t even get one of these blog posts out weekly. For now I choose living in the moment. And sleeping! That’s more my speed. 🥱😴