Day 42 – Woods Hole Hostel to Rice Field Shelter

I had trouble getting to sleep because the hostel only provides a bottom sheet, meaning I had to sleep in my cold weather sleeping bag in a warm room, but a backache pill took care of that.

A few of us sat in one of the rooms in the main house drinking coffee before breakfast and chatting, including Berry Picker and his wife, Alaska and Veto, and Fearless. Fearless had given Veto a new trail name of At Ease, which Veto adopted eagerly.

Once again the hostess did a little historical introduction about the hostel in its early days (her grandmother would ask the hikers if any of them wanted to say a blessing, and usually no one could think of one), and we did a circle of gratitude, then ate a breakfast of southern grits, scrambled eggs, cinnamon toast, fruit salad, and fresh bread. Ibhad seconds.

I checked out at 8:30 and hiked partway up the road with Alaska and At Ease, then said farewell and picked up my pace. I made very good time in the morning, averaging 3.2 miles per hour for the first three hours. I made it into Pearisburg by 12:30, did a resupply at Food Lion, and was back on trail by 2:15.

It’s a long walk from the road into Pearisburg to the highway crossing, maybe half an hour. At a point close to the highway I ran into Centipede, who was waiting for an Uber that probably never came (Uber will tell you it’s looking for a driver, but often in small towns there just aren’t any). He wanted to get to town to resupply and eat a restaurant dinner, then hit the trail. It’s too bad he didn’t do what I did, since I only had a 20 minute walk into town but where he was waiting would have been almost an hour.

I made ot to Rice Field Shelter aroubd 5:30. One man, Jack the Tripper, was already there. It’s now 8 and no one else has shown up. Jack has been working the trail a few days at a time since January with trips home to Boone, NC every week or so to see family, but now he’s going on trail full time (but not fully NOBO – in a while he’s heading to the northern end to do Katahdin and the one hundred mile wilderness then work his way back down to wherever he leaves off.

Rice Field Shelter is on a grassy field at the top of a ridge with clear  views to the north. It’s very windy and I’m starting to shiver, so it’s into my sleeping bag now. Let’s hope I’m warm overnight.  I was planning to get up at 5 and do some walking before the rain starts at 7. But now the Norwegian weather service is saying the worst of the rain will be from 6 to 6. So I think I’ll sleep in until 6:30.