Council to Damascus

Miles Today: 51.41
Average Speed: 8.0mph

Total Miles: 3,304.98

It wasn’t quite sunny when we woke up, but nature called both Evan and I out from our tents and through a very dewy, freshly mowed, clipping covered field. By the time we got back to the tent, our feet were more than sufficiently covered in wet grass clippings.
Bryan emerged from the other side of the pavilion looking fresh as a daisy, and we enjoyed using only one stove for our breakfast’s hot water needs. After a good chat and some oatmeal, we finished packing up and said goodbye to Bryan.

Good luck to him as he crosses the country!
We rolled across the field, and within the first twenty feet, Evan discovered his fenders were so clogged with wet grass that the wheels wouldn’t roll. Mine weren’t as bad, but we had some fun getting it out of there.


Because Darla had taken us in the park by way of a secret backyard and driveway route (we were privileged enough to be let in on the locals’ secret!), we didn’t have to climb the big hill that goes to the park’s entrance the night before. And because we had watched all the lifeguards exit by way of a different place than the top of the hill, we avoided that sucker altogether. The road spit us out on the other side of the hill. Thank you, William P. Harris, for your amazing rec center and its fantastic dual entryways!


Shortly after we got to riding, we passed a very curious street sign. Can any Hebrew speakers tell me if this might be an interesting English interpretation of Hebrew ‘house of peace’? I’ve only ever seen the English interpretation of ‘peace’ spelled shalom. I guess that’s the South, or the East, or the Southeast for you!


Today’s riding was pretty awesome for the most part. We wound through the woods, spent a lot of miles next to a creek, and didn’t find many hills that got us too riled up. It has been a pleasure to ride on roads that follow the stream, because streams don’t flow through the really hilly areas, so our roads have been fairly predictable in terms of grade. The views were pretty incredible once we climbed out of the stream bed, too.

After some nicely rolling hills and a glorious, exhilarating descent, we came across a field of goats!


We couldn’t convince any of them to come to the fence, so we decided to keep going.
We kept flying downhill for a couple more miles, and enjoyed increasingly beautiful views.

Then we reached Honaker, which is apparently the Redbud capitol of the world, but didn’t see nearly as many Redbud trees as we thought we would. Bummer.


Then the hills started to roll a little more vigorously, and we knew we were getting closer to our big climb of the afternoon. Luckily we were in the woods, which made the steeper hills a little more manageable.


We stopped for a shade break and a little snack next to this old house, which looked to be abandoned and probably at least a century old. Spooky, but cool.


We were spat out into the sunshine at the top of a few gentle climbs, and enjoyed the last descent before our big climb.


The descent left us at the creek bed again, and after a hairpin turn, we started to climb. One more switchback and we were plunged into the cool shade of a forested mountainside.
The road wasn’t very busy at all, and we kept seeing giant millipedes which amused both of us. Then an owl flew overhead and perched in a tree nearby.
The drop-off from the road was quite impressive, but I’m afraid I wasn’t able to accurately depict it with my camera. Trust that we would’ve been goners had we gone off the edge.


I didn’t take any other pictures because I was mostly focused on not going over the edge of the road, and listening for cars, and pedaling and other things one does on a hill, but trust that we climbed a lot, and it was pretty sweaty but overall enjoyable.
Cut to the part where we are at the top!


We had a little lunch, admired more crazy bugs, and then got to the downhill portion of the epic hill.


It was good for us to go east over this portion of the route, because we were plunged into Hayter’s Gap (pronounced High-ter)–had we been going west, the climb OUT of the gap would have nearly killed us, I’m sure. Instead, we had a smaller climb, and a bigger descent. Obviously, we still had to climb back out on the other side, but it wasn’t terribly steep or long.
Then we rode some more, the same as every day.
Our destination for the day was Damascus, a little town that crosses the Appalachian Trail. We figured we’d take a day there to re-coup, do laundry, use wifi, and drink copious amounts of coffee. Hooray, Damascus!


Our first sign that something was amiss was the ducks.


There were ducks everywhere. And they were mostly white with red faces.
Actually, it wasn’t the ducks that tipped us off. It was really the hordes of hikers and the “Trail Days 2012” signs that were plastered everywhere, the dogs and the tents and the packs and the general busy-ness of the place.
We had stumbled into a festival. Oh, my.
Shortly after rolling into town, stunned and in need of chocolate milk, we were wandering up the street when a guy in clean clothes walked up.
Nick, who is about to go into seminary in Denver for the United Methodist Church, led us to a city park, where ten or eleven tents a bunch of cyclists were hanging out!
Our knight in shining armor, a gleaming army of familiar folks… You have no idea how relieved we were when their trip leader, Steve, said we could pitch our tent in the park with them.
You see, we had been wandering amongst talk of “tent cities”, where hikers can pitch tents for 5 dollars, where drum circles and drinking abound, where we definitely wouldn’t sleep a wink. Nick is a part of an unsupported Adventure Cycling trip, and he and his companions are riding toward Oregon. They had permission to use the park, normally a no-camping area, for the night. Their leader, Steve, had his 23rd birthday that day, and we enjoyed a pizza dinner with them.
I had a lot of fun around the hikers, but it was definitely nice to know I was among folks doing the same thing as me, who understand the need for rest.
I wasn’t able to get any pictures of the whole group, nor can I remember more than a few names, but Nick was kind enough to send me a picture of the whole group.


We enjoyed hanging with them, but they had taken their rest day while we were riding into Damascus, so in the morning we had to say goodbye and find another place to sleep.
Kudos to Dottie, the only woman in their group of ten. She and her husband Don are riding together.


Our awesome site was right along the river. We had a nasty thunderstorm that night, which caused the river to rise a few feet and sent many tent-campers scurrying away from the receding shore line in the middle of the night, but fortunately we were safely away from the shore. We decided to let the tent dry for as long as possible in the morning before striking out to find a new camping spot.
The ducks were out, and one of the bikers brought me a bag of bread loaf ends to feed them!


By 7 or so, everybody was packing up, and I had to get a picture of all the tents behind the ‘no camping’ sign.


Lastly, but not least-ly, here is a picture of a duck on a porch.


The day in Damascus is a whole ‘nother story–one of hikers and trail names, Evan’s crazy trip to the laundromat in an over-capacity van, seam-sealing the tent, and ending up camped on the river in the backyard of the Lazy Fox Inn with a quieter bunch of hikers.
We met tons of people, all of whom had trail names, some of whom had trail dogs… Papillon and Yoyo were a hiker-dog duo, Belch and Shine and a guy who I called Two-Syllable (his trail name has two syllables and was hard for me to remember), Segue and Kraken and Sarge, Sweet Tea and her dog Heavy, King Tut, Machete Mitch, Pepper, Sicilian Gypsy, and a host of others were welcoming and wonderful and full of questions for the bikers without hiker names.