600 Miles, With Company

600 Miles!

In the past 3 days, we've hiked about 25 miles further into Southwestern Virginia. The weather cooled off considerably, producing some nice days for hiking, and the terrain has been mercifully easy, including lots of flat-ish ridge walking.

Ridge Hiking on Tuesday.

The days have not been uneventful, however, because we've had company. Daddy's good friend, trail name Hooter, came up from the deep south on Tuesday to pay us a visit.

Hiking Trio.

Hooter is really much better at this outdoor excursion thing than we are, since he has been known to spend weeks wandering around various wildernesses looking for adventure and elusive game. In other words, he likes being in the middle of nowhere as much as we do. Better still, he is a positively endless wealth of trivia and comic relief. He seems to be an expert on Appalachian flora and fauna, and can usually identify any plant or pile of droppings we pass. When he's not educating us on our surroundings or finding treasures for us to photograph (he's much more observant than we are), he's telling us stories of his own previous outdoor adventures, most of which sound like complete hogwash, all of which are complete truth. Needless to say, I've been thoroughly entertained by something other than nice views, and it's been great having someone who actually knows what they're doing out here.

View from a ridge.

Learning about wild blueberries. Or an elusive Canadian sheep. Or my complete inability to do simple math on demand. One or the other.

Today, we hit the 600 mile mark. That's the equivalent of walking from my house in Kentucky to the Gulf of Mexico. A long way, and it was an exciting milestone. We also saw a baby fawn, found more wild blackberries, and ended our hike on a really neat suspension bridge.

AT Suspension Bridge.

AT Family.

One of the best things about having a visit from Hooter is that it comes with good food. We've had pork chops, salmon patties, breakfast-for-dinner, homemade ice cream, cobbler (again), and a campfire every night. But by far the best treat was desert tonight - biscuits covered in raw honey from Hooter's farm, which, believe me, doesn't taste like the stuff in the bear at the supermarket you're used to. Overall, a great addition to our little adventure.

Honey and Biscuits the way God intended.

Memorable Quotes:

"I have more witticisms than Carter has Little Liver Pills." -Hooter

"How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." -Hooter's long distance hiking advice