Zero Day in Wytheville

Zero Day in Wytheville

Day Eight – Monday, March 31, 2014

We slept late at the Best Western in Wytheville, enjoying the warmth of the comfortable bed.  The complimentary breakfast was a treat.

We spent the rest of the day doing laundry at a Laundromat, buying some resupply things at Walmart, and trying to find the leak in my air mattress to see if it could be patched.   After determining that the split was in the seam, we then started looking for a sporting goods store to buy a new one.  Alas, Blytheville does not have such a place.  So we headed up the interstate to Roanoke and Gander Mountain where I settled on a Thermarest sleeping pad.

After a filling lunch at Cracker Barrel, we drove to 4 Pines Hostel close to Catawba, Virginia to get ready for our next leg of the journey.  Joe Mitchell has created a hiker hostel in his garage.  It is a large room filled with two beds, numerous couches, a kitchen area, a wood-burning stove and a bathroom/shower in the corner.  Other than it being cluttered and having an odor, it was okay. 

The two beds were already claimed by Chainsaw, a thru-hiker, and Hutch, who was hiking a section from Damascus north.   We each chose a couch and set up our bedding area.  Mine unfortunately was the one where the cat wanted to sleep; I repeatedly had to push him off of me throughout the night.