{"id":102,"date":"2009-05-06T13:52:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-06T17:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/?p=102"},"modified":"2010-05-15T22:06:29","modified_gmt":"2010-05-16T02:06:29","slug":"wapiti-shelter-to-pearisburg-va","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/06\/wapiti-shelter-to-pearisburg-va\/","title":{"rendered":"Wapiti Shelter to Pearisburg, VA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tuesday, 5\/5<\/p>\n<p>AT Miles = 16.6 \/ 625.9<br \/>Other Miles = 0.8 \/25.5<br \/>Total Miles = 17.4 \/ 651.4<\/p>\n<p>Just before sunset last night the sky actually cleared up, and we were<br \/>treated to a bit of a view of the sunset. It was a sucker punch,<br \/>though, as during the night the wet weather rolled back in and it<br \/>rained all night, sometimes quite heavily. I was up at 6:45, and true<br \/>to form it took almost exactly one hour to eat breakfast, pack up, and<br \/>be ready to leave.<\/p>\n<p>For most of today&#39;s hike I had only showers and that penetrating fog<br \/>to deal with. I was moving a bit slower than usual because my left<br \/>foot is pretty beat up. Blisters and sire spots make it painful pretty<br \/>much with every step. I reached Doc&#39;s Knob Shelter about a quarter<br \/>after eleven and stopped for half an hour to eat lunch, then pressed<br \/>on towards my goal of Pearisburg.<\/p>\n<p>There is supposed to be wonderful views of the valley Pearisburg is in<br \/>from a spot named Angels Rest atop Pearis Mountain. All I saw when I<br \/>got there was the inside of the cloud. On top of that, it started<br \/>raining very heavily and I was a sodden mess even with my rain gear<br \/>on.<\/p>\n<p>The trail descends steeply from here along a long series of<br \/>switchbacks, and by now my foot was hurting badly enough that I gave<br \/>up all pretext of toughness and exclaimed out loud every once in a<br \/>while. Finally, finally, I reached Pearisburg. The trail goes through<br \/>the edge of town and in order to get into the center of town where all<br \/>the businesses are I had to walk almost a mile along Main Street,<br \/>which out here at the fringe of town is a four lane road with no<br \/>shoulders and a 50 mph speed limit. Walking along the gutter in the<br \/>rain getting splashed with filthy water by every passing vehicle<br \/>pretty much capped the day for me.<\/p>\n<p>I&#39;vwe got a room in the cheapest motel in town, and it is just exactly<br \/>what you&#39;d think the cheapest room in town would look like. Still,<br \/>even though it hasn&#39;t been redecorated since apparently the 70s, it&#39;s<br \/>clean and it provides me everything I need to get dried out and regain<br \/>my enthusiasm for the trail.<\/p>\n<p>Wow, I looked at myself in the mirror when I got out of the shower<br \/>this afternoon. I am skinny! I think I need to do some serious eating<br \/>while I am here. I am going to take at least one zero day here.<br \/>Hopefully that will be enough to let my feet heal up. If not I may<br \/>have to take an extra day off before I get back out on the trail.<br \/>Without healthy feet this hike would be impossible.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; <br \/>~~~~~<br \/>Allen F. Freeman<br \/><a href=\"mailto:allen@allenf.com\">allen@allenf.com<\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.allenf.com\">www.allenf.com<\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/allenf.blogspot.com\">allenf.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tuesday, 5\/5 AT Miles = 16.6 \/ 625.9Other Miles = 0.8 \/25.5Total Miles = 17.4 \/ 651.4 Just before sunset last night the sky actually cleared up, and we weretreated to a bit of a view of the sunset. It was a sucker punch,though, as during the night the wet weather rolled back in and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at_thru_hike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":444,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}