woods hole hostel to hb farm

another massive day. i slept so well on the mattress in woods hole. it was a little short for me, but otherwise very comfortable. i slept pretty late, but woke up, rolled out my muscles, and was dressed before the breakfast bell rang. i headed outside to see kick and poppins hike up! sadly there wasn’t enough breakfast made for them, but they did get coffee.

breakfast was like dinner, a small buffet of choices. eggs, grits, some kind of apple granola, and more bread and apple butter, yum.

after breakfast, i packed up and headed up the hill to the work site discussed at dinner. the job was to get more water into the sprong box that fed the house. my job was to build a retaining wall to encourage water to go into the box rather than down the hill. the rest of the crew, including kick, showed up a few minutes later and were tasked with bringinge rocks. i built a decent enough wall in less than an hour, and we backfilled it with muck.

maestro wasn’t part of the work crew, he has plans to meet up with a friend, and needed to hike past pearisburg, so he got right on trail. our plan is to meet back up with him in a few days.

the job site was muddy, so i had taken off my socks and gone barefoot in my shoes. the rest of the crew had found loaner shoes and boots in their sizes, but alas, wookiees don’t often find second hand shoes. my shoes were a mess, so i decided to hike a bit without socks. it wasn’t bad because the terrain was reasonably flat.

the payment for the work was that the rest of the group got to slack pack. neville brought their packs to hb farm for them and they hiked with only water and a snack. when i defined my thru-hike however, i decided that i’d carry my stuff the whole way, so i didn’t send my pack ahead.

the weather was beautiful and we hiked a ridge that offered some stunning views:

we began our decent into pearisburg, and almost immediately ran into maestro. apparently he had fallen asleep at one of the lookouts after his lunch. we hiked on, he was not willing to keep pace with the slack packers. i was doing pretty good at keeping up, though i was a little behind especially when they jogged a bit of the trail. eventually i caught up, but then disaster stuck. i tripped on the top of a small set of stone steps and fell on the trail. i hit al hard i had to take a second to do an assessment to determine if i was really hurt or not. thankfully only cuts and bruises, though despite catching myself i couldn’t arrest my momentum enough to prevent my head from hitting the ground. luckily it was only a small bump to the head. bleeding and bruised, i finished the last half mile into town.

we hitched into town fairly quickly, though ww made it about a half mile off the trail before someone picked us up. he was going to the tractor supply next door to the all you can eat chinese buffet we were heading to.

many plates of food later, we paid and stumbled out into the sunshine. we walked to the outfitter, which was an adjunct to a gift shop and i got some dinners and a piece of tyvek to help protect my new sleeping pad. (the ever so awesome magz called nemo for me and they promptly sent a new pad her way. nemo ftw! i already loved my nemo sleeping pad, but now it’s really sealed.) this took a while, as the woman who owned the gift shop was being visited by some old friends.

we walked back to the food lion to finish our resupply. i was the first out, and while i sat on the pavement waiting for the others, i called magz. we had a brief conversation before the guy from hb farm arrived to pick us up.

the farm is beautiful. lots of barns, we had our pick to sleep in. there is a small makeshift kitchen and a shower that is actually way too hot. it’s hooked up to a water heater and only has an on / off valve. i had to stand off to the side pretty much the whole time. it was still very much appreciated as i was dirty from the work party and from my fall. there are also myriad dogs here. many are clearly rescues and won’t come anywhere near you, but they also have what i’m certain is a white dire wolf, amd it just wants to play all the time. at one point the entire crew was chasing it around a bus while it played keep away with what were remnants of a former tennis ball.

we ate some dinner, shared some beers, and then i came to the barn to journal. i’m not sure where everyone else got to.

some additional images from today: