Month: March 2023

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Midday Escape from Daleville

It was broad daylight. Around 11 a.m. I’d been trapped in Daleville for nearly two days. Holed up inside a kind of fortress that brazenly displayed a neon sign out front: “Super 8,” its bright yellow light screamed through the night.

I knew I had to get out, by any means necessary.

Daleville the town is harmless enough. A small burg in western central Virginia that specializes in strip malls, Cracker Barrell and unwalkable roads. Even the Super 8 served a purpose on my journey. Once. Twice. Now a third time.

I’d already spent a week at the Daleville Super 8 in late October 2022. It was the refuge I turned to when I hobbled off the Appalachian Trail with a stress fracture in my right foot, third metatarsal. The Super 8 was where I made the excruciating decision not to continue, to call a hiatus from the trail, return home and nurse my injury for the winter. It was from where I limped out every night back then, across the parking lot and up to the bar at Pancho’s, a Mexican restaurant, the only eating establishment within walking distance.

Super 8 of Daleville was where I returned once again on March 17, 2023. A place from which to launch my resumption of an AT thru-hike. Fly into Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport and the Daleville Super 8 is an easy enough Lyft ride away. I arranged a shuttle pickup to run me up to Jennings Creek, about 30 miles north, where I last exited the AT.

Two and a half days of hiking brought me right back to Daleville, to an annoying highway crossing two doors down from the Super 8. Back again. And again, the Super 8 offered the value of a room with Wifi to facilitate my writing deadline. For this third stay, having regained the benefit of my healthy foot, I could venture further from the Super 8, into Daleville proper. There I visited a series of establishments. Kroger’s, for trail resupply. Mountain Trail Outfitters for some sunscreen. And most importantly, Three Lil Pigs BBQ for sustenance, a much-needed change of pace from overused Pancho’s.

Three multi-night stays in Daleville. Three respites at the Super 8.

I knew I had to escape.

Breakout of the Super 8

High in the mountains above Daleville, Va., near Hay Rock.

It wasn’t an easy caper. I packed up in silence, hoping not to attract any suspicion. I pulled on my pack and surreptitiously descended the stairs to the lobby.

Melissa at the front desk appeared to know exactly what I was up to, and asked if I wanted a receipt. Surprised at her penetrating foresight, I stammered, unsure what to say. Finally, I whispered, “Can you email it?” She could, no problem.

She wished me well with all the transparency of a KGB thug. Behind her smile I suspected chicanery. She betrayed her motive and proved my suspicion correct when she welcomed me to “come back again any time” loudly enough for others to hear. “We love our regulars.”

So that was how it was. A Daleville Super 8 regular.

It was decided then. Escape I must, and quickly.

I smiled, too, playing Melissa’s game. Then I stepped out through the automatic sliding door. And I was outside. Ready to leave, it seemed. But surely this was too simple. I tried not to look back but relented to my curiosity. Back inside the lobby doors, Melissa watched me, the smile still on her face. I knew it. I would never be allowed to effortlessly walk away from Daleville and the Super 8 forever.

But for the moment, walk I did, continuing on my way. Past Pancho’s. Across the obnoxious, unwalkable highway (after waiting eight minutes for a break in traffic). I could feel Melissa’s prying eyes still upon me as I walked back onto the AT.

Was it true? Had I escaped Daleville?

Gone But Not Escaped

But of course, it was all a ruse. Even as I lost sight of the Super 8 for the moment, I could hear that incessant Daleville traffic. Would it ever cease its torment?

After more than two miles hiking, Daleville Super 8 remains in view.

I hiked for a full hour, climbing up, away, hope building with every step, every foot of elevation gained. I crested a mountaintop adorned with massive, humming power lines.

That’s when I fell to my knees in agony. Of course it was all too good to be true. I would never escape Daleville. For far below, even after hiking for two hours, lay an unobscured view of the town, splayed in all its mundane paleness. And directly across from me, glaring in a clearing, its neon sign reaching out to me miles away, pulling me back: the Super 8.

I hadn’t escaped anything. I hastened onward, still determined to leave Daleville behind for good. Another hour, another several miles along a mountain ridge. Still, relentlessly as I stopped for breath, the traffic and sounds of Daleville and that loud yellow sign yelling Super 8 reaching up to me in the hills.

I was convinced. I could hike all day, for days on end even, and still not escape this bland, nondescript town and the Super 8 that once offered succor.

If you squint, you can still see Daleville Super 8’s yellow sign far in the distance.

Even now, alone in the woods, night setting in, while I can no longer see Daleville below, nor hear its car horns honking, its truck engines whining, while the Super 8 sign doesn’t light up the forest, I know. It’s still there. Never far away. Beckoning me back. It will always be there. When I close my eyes. When in the silence I hear its echoes. Whenever I dine out on mediocre Mexican food.

I’ve left Daleville, but I haven’t really escaped. I will go back again someday.

I am, after all, as Melissa made all too clear, a regular at the Super 8.   

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Back on the (Cold) Trail

Sleeping bag liner? Nah, shouldn’t need it.

Insulated gloves? No way, overkill.

Base layer? Don’t want to carry the weight.

My first night back on the Appalachian Trail, March 18, it became apparent I had erred. I hiked 10 miles from a rural trailhead at Jennings Creek, about 30 miles north of Roanoke, Va. The hiking was awesome all day, around mid-40s and sunny. I stopped at a shelter named Bobblet’s Gap and humped a quarter-mile down switchbacks to the structure. It was around 5 p.m. when I arrived and the temperature was dropping fast. It wouldn’t have been too bad except for the icy wind, which picked up intensity through the night.

I bundled up, confident in my 20-degree sleeping bag’s ability to withstand the cold assault. I’d slept in cold weather before.

But not like this. Not with this freezing wind buffeting my thin layer of nylon. Not exposed on the slatted wood floor of a three-walled shelter with nothing holding off the wind. And not without having prepared for freezing weather with base layer, sleeping bag liner and, sometimes, insulated gloves.

At around midnight, I was remembering my errant rejections of those cold-weather supplies as the temperature dropped below 20 and seeped into my sleeping bag. My double-socked feet were the first to let me know this would be a fitful night as I struggled fruitlessly to get them warm and comfortable. Then I felt the frigid draft on my back every time I turned on one side as it snuck in the open top of my sleeping bag and wheedled down lower and lower like a snake seeking warmth. Eventually, the shivering began. I restrained myself from checking my watch every few minutes to see if this interminable night was working its way toward morning sun.

It wasn’t.

Move or Stay?

I considered getting up, packing my things in the midnight dark and start hiking again. It probably would have been the prudent thing to do. And if it were any colder and if I were not able to snag a few moments of sleep here and there I would have opted for that dire choice.

Instead, I hunkered tighter from the cold, curling into an ever tighter fetal ball and waited it out. Morning would come. Eventually.

Welcome back to the Appalachian Trail.

Smart Packing

Packing for a backpacking trip is an art in itself. It’s a fine balance between stripping down your list to the barest of essentials and anticipating must-haves and levels of comfort.

Some thru-hikers prance down the trail with a pack weighing only 12 or 15 pounds, equipped only with a plastic tarp for shelter, no changes of clothes and a handful of energy bars. I admire them but it’s not for me. I’m not the heaviest of packers, but I insist on an enclosed shelter like a tent of hammock, a sleeping bag and things like rain gear, eyeglasses and actual meals.

But when I’d set the date for my return to the AT, I checked weather forecasts for the central Virginia region I’d be returning to, and they looked reasonable. Lows in the 30s, highs in the 50s. Sounded quite ideal for hiking.

My main error was not considering the elevation. A rookie mistake that I’ve sufficiently berated myself for. My shelter mate that night, trail named Cayenne, told me about a site named ATweather.org. Plug in the shelter you’re aiming for and it’ll give you the weather forecast at that location, rather than, uselessly, down in the towns 3,000 feet below.

That would have been good to have when I was packing. I might have thrown in my sleeping bag liner. Definitely would have packed my base layer. That surely would have yielded me a better night’s sleep.

Tough Morning

As long and uncomfortable as the night at Bobblet’s Gap was, the morning was even more intense.

Cayenne, a hardy Vermonter, rose at 5 a.m., well before daylight, and headed out into the dark. He’d been hiking since January and was equipped for the cold.

That left me alone in the shelter, deep down in the gap where, even as the sun rose above, its rays would not penetrate into this gully.

Sunset at Fullhardt Knob.

The most mundane of morning chores were a quick dash out and back into the sleeping bag to warm frozen hands. Brushing teeth. Retrieving water. Making breakfast. Each time, back inside the sleeping bag to recover. I was dreading the moment when I’d have to pack up the sleeping bag, my only source of refuge.

To make matters worse, all my water had frozen. No morning tea. And I’m a cold-soaker, meaning I don’t carry a stove to heat up water for meals. Eating my cold-soaked oatmeal was like chomping ice.

MacGuyver Time

Okay, I was caught off guard on my return to the trail. Made rookie mistakes. I certainly should have put a bottle or two of water inside my sleeping bag. That would have saved me from dehydration in the morning.

By the time I departed and climbed back up out of Bobblet’s Gap and the AT, it was mid-morning. At least I was moving, and my hands would thaw before long.

I climbed and built heat, the sun warmed the trail and gradually my layers came off. A pleasant hiking day ensued, for 13.5 miles, to a mountaintop shelter named Fullhardt Knob.

I took a sunset picture and checked the forecast, properly this time, on ATweather.org. Another frigid night, down in the low 20s.

I placed two water bottles inside my sleeping bag, along with my gloves. A childhood fan of the TV show MacGuyver (the old one, haven’t seen the new one), I considered everything at my disposal. I stuffed my tent rain fly inside my sleeping bag to simulate a liner. I zipped myself up inside my tent. I put on every layer of clothing I had, including rain gear. And though my sleeping bag zipper chose to stop working and wouldn’t close up at about midnight, I adjusted and slept restfully for nearly nine hours.

The forecast for the coming week looks perfect with highs in the 60s and lows in the 30s and 40s. I survived the freeze.

Welcome back to the trail.