Greetings all!

The moral of this story will come first, just for efficiency's sake: Erwin, Tennessee is impossible to escape!

Time for the story: Two days ago, I had spent the night in the Super 8 motel in Erwin and was ready to pull out and hit the trail. The weather was miserable, but our motto out here is "No pain, no rain, no Maine" so I was ready to put some miles down. I glanced at my map and started to walk back to the trailhead, figuring I would hitch most of the distance once I hit a major road.

This little stroll quickly evolved into 4 miles of roadwalking as I cursed the "Not Drawn to Scale" warning on my town map and the impossibility of getting a hitch down to the Nolichucky river where the trail meets the town. Just then, salvation! A phone call from Grizzle, Chach and Sideshow saying they had arrived in town and were staying with Joe D, a family friend of Sideshow's who lived about 20 minutes away in Virginia. I couldn't resist, and they picked me up on the side of the road and off we went!

After a lunch at the amazing Erwin Burrito, we went to Joe D's beautiful 1920s home, where we relaxed, played some Halo (attn AU people: rest assured that I owned) and ate a TON of food, including a monstrous plate of nachos I whipped up.

The next day (yesterday) we went to Miss Janet's, the legendary trail hostel. There we arranged a 20 mile slackpack South from Iron Mountain Gap back into town, meaning we would spend ANOTHER night in this vortex of a town! The hike took longer than we expected, about 8 hours. We got to hike with Miss Janet's dog, Thabian, who is the best trail dog I have ever met. He stuck with us, waiting when we stopped and finding the trail for us in odd places.

Last night a few friends of Grizzle's came to visit, and we had dinner and hung out for a while with them before heading back to Miss Janet's to sleep. This hostel is amazing... a comfortable home STUFFED with hikers who all pitch in to help things run smoothly, and gather around the table for family style meals.

Today we are FINALLY going to escape Erwin (I swear!) and hike out towards Roan Mountain. We should be into Kincora, another legendary trail hostel, in about 4 days, then it's just 3 or 4 days to DAMASCUS VIRGINIA!!!!

Damascus... the promised land! Start of the famed Easy Virginia section, and probably the most famous of the trail towns, site of the annual Trail Days celebration (which we will be hitching back for in grand fashion!) Also, where I am swapping my tent for my Hennessy Hammock, and my heavy synthetic 15* bag for a light, compressible 25* down sleeping bag. I will drop about 7 lbs from my pack, and life will be GOOD!

A final note: Every morning at Miss Janet's all the hikers discuss a question over breakfast. Today we were talking about what places we wish we had stopped longer along the trail and enjoyed. Turns out everyone has a handful of places that they were in too much of a rush to stop and appreciate, myself DEFINITELY included. I am going to try to leverage this lesson into a new philosophy on this hike... taking every opportunity to enjoy the spectacular places and people I am walking among.

Missing you all a lot, can't wait to hike my way up North and be closer to all of you!
Love,
Rob
Bigby