Hwy. 623 to Bland, Virginia

Hwy. 623 to Bland

Day Four – Thursday, March 27, 2014

15.5 miles
8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

We woke up in a warm, cozy room with 20 degree weather outside.  Brrr! It was hard to make ourselves get back out there, but we finally did.  We drove down the motel driveway to the bottom of the hill to the Diary Queen for breakfast again, and then we met Bubba back at the motel for the long drive back up to the top of Garden Mountain.  The road was even icier and slicker this morning, although the snow had stopped falling.

The good news is –we are slackpacking today!!  That will make walking in the snow much easier!

We could see Burkes Garden slightly from this angle—not as well as we could have on the other side yesterday, but we did catch a glimpse of it.  What an awesome geological anomaly. It really does look like God put his thumb down and pressed it into the ground.  People actually live down there.   

We walked in deep snow drifts again today but we were also slack-packing, so that made it a little easier.  We only have one day’s hike to get back to Bland.  All day we alternated between snowy paths on the north/east side of the mountain and no snow on the south/west side.  

The trail leading to Jenkins Shelter is good terrain and a nice walk except for the rocks on much of it.  Especially the last half mile before the shelter is a nice leafy path.  Jenkins Shelter sits off the trail with the privy on the hill behind it.  I was surprised to find the privy was only a platform up off the ground with a toilet sitting on it.  No walls!  That was a funny feeling sitting there!

After the shelter we had a particularly easy section with a nice, wide, leafy trail.  After Laurel Creek, we had one uphill then again an easy walk on top of the mountain.  We thought we were reaching Bland when we saw a little town down below, but the trail stayed up high so we figured out it was Bastion that we passed by. 

We then came out of the trail onto a small gravel road.  We had to call Bubba to ask which way to go from there and he told us to turn left and walk a half mile down the road to a church and senior center. We waited there for Bubba to pick us up. 

We had left our car at the motel all packed up and ready to move up the trail.  We drove up to Pearisburg where we planned to stay for the night and hike southbound back to Bland in three days.  We stopped at the Friends and Family Restaurant to dinner, then went on in to Pearisburg to get a hotel room. 

We first went to Holiday Motor Lodge and saw a note on the door saying they were full.  We then went right next door to the Plaza Motel.  There were LOTS of trucks in the parking lot and men all around.  We went inside to the office to ask for a room.  They said they were all booked up with road construction crews.  We asked them to call MacArthur Inn in Narrows –2 miles west—to see if they had a room, which they did not.  They also were full of construction workers.  Alas, no room to be found! 

So we turned around and went back to Bland.  Instead of hiking south, we will hike north to Pearisburg and arrange for Bubba to pick us up to bring us back to our vehicle.  We usually like to hike TO the vehicle, but in this case we won’t be able to.

We’re getting pretty familiar with Bland by now.  Bubba is very nice and helpful as a shuttle driver.  His wife, Angie, keeps the motel rooms very clean.  This time we met the owner of the motel, Willy Davis.  He is very nice also.  I would say this is one of the nicer, although reasonable in rates, motels for hikers along the trail.

This time we couldn’t get Room #1, so we stayed in Room #2.