Day 59 | Appalachian Trail Thru Hike 2024 | Marion, VA

Good morning. It's day 59. It's 6 35. They say every journey begins with a single step, but I believe ours began over two years ago when we decided to attempt a through hike of the Appalachian Trail. Through years of preparation and training, we prepared ourselves for an adventure of a lifetime. This is our journey to Katahdin. Well, the reality of camping in a thunderstorm. It's completely saturated and dirty and I gotta go wash this off because it's got a little bit of splash back last night. We stayed dry and cozy, so that's all that matters. Just a little bit of cleanup today and I don't think I'm gonna have the opportunity to dry out the tent at all today because it's supposed to rain today as well, but also it's just it's just so wet. There's so much moisture in the air. So I'm gonna come down to the water source and then rinse this stuff off, get some more water, pack up the tent, and we're gonna head into Marion. It's about 10.1 miles to Marion where we will probably stay at the Mary Inn. It's the Marion Outdoors hostel if they have anything available. I haven't had cell signal to try to book anything and yesterday when we did get cell signal to send a very quick text off to family, simultaneously we got the weather alert that the rain, heavy rain, was incoming in 30 minutes. So we didn't even mess with it. We just kind of booked it down the mountain and got set up in camp yesterday. So regardless where we stay, there's also three motels I think as well, but regardless where we stay we have to do get a few things. We need a couple of OP sacks or odor proof sacks to go in our bear bags. Both of ours have ripped, which is no big deal. I mean it's been over 500 miles so they've done their jobs and little bear needs some new trekking poles. Her cascade mountains that she's had now for probably, I'd say close to 700 miles. 700 miles because you've done all of this and then the foothills trails almost twice and our section hikes and you know. So she's going to get some new trekking poles and then of course we need to resupply because we're almost out of food. I always have an extra day. Little bear has probably an extra half day just to make sure that we don't run out of food should we have to extend our days in between town resupplies but yep we need to do that. I have a couple clients that I need to try to talk to while I'm in town and then we get to talk to family. It's been now about three days since we've really been able to talk to them other than just a few very quick texts and like once a day. So we're looking forward to that. Marion's is a really nice town and we're excited to get there. Of course there's always the flora of town food and we're excited to have a proper meal tonight. Not sure what or where we're going. Haven't really looked to see what's around there so we'll just have to be surprised when we get there. But here we go. Onward. That sounds good. We'll see if we can make that happen for you. So we would need to probably look for an Italian restaurant. They are. Hey friends. Well it's it's proper raining now. I probably should have taken my umbrella out too. Now let's get through this and then I'll uh I have my rain jacket on. Hi. Mind if we pass? Thank you. Thank you. Hey guys. Well this is a treat. Excuse me please. You might have to go around this little guy or this big guy. Hi. Hi. Have a nice day. All right probably should take my umbrella out now. Wow yeah it does look like a lazy river. Oh this is very slick. Oh my goodness. The life of a mountain stream. I know it looks pretty deep. I wonder if this is like a portal to go straight through that circle. Little bear can you help me? I gotta get out of this blowdown. You think? Okay. Well sorry Rye Valley. I'm not able to see a whole lot. But I better come along because little bear is quickly making her way with cool breeze. We just booked a couple of bunks. They didn't have a private room available unfortunately. But we just booked a couple of bunks at the Marion Inn which I'm really excited about because um I remember reading about their gear store and then they made a hostel I think on the second floor. I'm not sure. But lots of great reviews. Supposed to be a lovely place that has everything that you need. And so right now the plan is to walk into Partnership Shelter and then coach from Marion Inn an outdoor store. We'll come pick us up. I think it's about six miles into the city or into the town. And then we will hopefully have a shower, start our laundry, work on resupply, and we're trying to decide whether or not we will take a zero tomorrow or if we will head on a couple of days. Tomorrow will be six days. So we're trying to take a zero anywhere between seven to eight days. Maybe three times per month or so. Just to rest our bodies and hike and work a little bit and we can eat better food. But we'll just have to see what it looks like for tomorrow and kind of how we're feeling. We have probably everybody that we've been hiking around. Multiple different families. Everybody's going to Trail Days tomorrow. So they're actually taking four to five zeros to hit Trail Days Thursday through Sunday and then coming back being shuttled into Marion or wherever they left off on Monday. And most people are taking that day off too. So yeah, we are glad Little Bear and I have talked a couple more times because we've had multiple offers of getting us to and from Trail Days. But we're just glad that we've decided to skip it this year. Our rest days need to be productive and Trail Days, from what I can already tell and see, will not be productively restful. It'll be fun, but we need to rest. And we've got places to go. I don't really want to be zeroed anywhere for three to four days. The only exception I would make for that, of course, would be for our family coming to visit. And I'm not even sure when that can happen because my husband's really not able to take off much time. And as we get further north, he would need, in my opinion, more than just his weekend days to come visit us and drive and bring the family with him. So anyways, yeah, that would be my only exception to taking that many zeros in a row would be if it was just the family. And that's not happening. So we'll see what happens tomorrow. We'll decide probably tonight if we want to zero tomorrow or if we want to look ahead and see what else might be another option to zero in the next three to four days. We're coming up on Partnership Shelter, which is famous on the ET for being, I think, the only shelter where you can actually order a pizza and have it delivered. We're carrying on Point 2 Pass here to get to Mount Rogers Headquarters, where we'll be picked up by coach to be taken into town. Wow, look how nice. I think that's so pretty. And then they even have places to dry your tent and all that out. And I think we're coming up on. Hello, little bird. Hi. All right, looks like this is where the headquarters is located and we get to go into town. I told coach 1230 to one o'clock and it's about 1215. Well, here we are on our way into town. Thank you so much for picking us up. Glad to. I saw you all in Damascus last week. I follow you some on YouTube. So I was glad to be the one to bring you to Mary. Well, we are so excited for you to be here. Hashtag. You're celebrities. I know. From wherever you came, downtown to wherever they're serving the dinner, back to the, or the, you know, it's just back and forth all the time. You can get in easily, something like that, but it's not really a high store. Okay. Not that kind of product. Here's the post office. It's one block behind the hostel. Okay. The bus picks up here. If you need the bus, it's just a block from the hostel. Okay. Go around town or back to the center. Some people get you back up to the center. Okay. Is Maryam particularly big? Population about 6,000. Oh. Stretches out about two and a half, three miles. Right. But downtown is a good, tight downtown. Yeah. And then it spreads out with the fast food places, Walmart, the grocery stores. So if you need it while you're here, since you're talking about being here today, here is their library. Okay. If you need to do any computer-related kind of anything. Okay. And the bus looks like this if you want to try to catch it to go around town. Ah. It's a blue bus, but you might ask them where they're going because you might have to go all over town before you got where you're going. That's a good tip, I think. Model chain museum. I'm looking to see what we can do tomorrow on our zero. Because I just decided we're taking a beer. When I heard there was breakfast and a beautiful coffee bar shop right next to where we're staying, sold. Is that the equivalent of when someone says burger and beer to me? Yes, probably. I think so. Now they're putting up their flags for our Memorial Day display in our parade. There'll be around 1,500 of these crosses with a full-size flag and it has someone's name on it. You pay for your person, your veteran. It doesn't have to be a deceased veteran. And they have the name and what branch of service and a full-size flag and it's just a nice display and everybody likes to stop and see it. That seems beautiful. What a nice thing to do. When is Memorial Day? Next, maybe another week to nine days, something like that. And here, this is downtown Pioneer. I think I'm gonna stop here. There's nowhere down there for me to park. Let me just park right here. Okay. This one's downtown Pioneer. Their breakfast, they open at seven. They have a good breakfast. They have a real hiker. All right, a little bit. Let's go to the hostel, which is right here at the Marion. And then we will maybe get into Sister's Cafe and get spore. Oh, wildflower, look at that. That's so cool, a bakery. And we heard to have lunch here. We're freshly showered. We have our laundry going and Little Bear is signing the wall. Nice job. This is gonna look like a cat. Check us out, our cool loaner clothes. Hello, kitty pants. Let's go get something to eat. So we got a Reuben sandwich with macaroni and you got a chicken wrap. You said it was really good today. Thank you. Nice free supply. How do you feel? We are at the Wooden Pickle having dinner with our buddy, old pal. Cool breeze. We're gonna have steak and I'm gonna have a glass of red wine and you're going to have confused mac and cheese. All right. Sounds like a plan. What have you picked? Cool breeze. Well, I picked a bottle of the Oxford Landing. Oh, perfect. Perfect. Love it. Thank you. And we're so happy to be celebrating this day with you. It is. Such good, good food. Today we're choosing to end the day in honor of National Police Week and our favorite heroes. My husband, Little Bear's daddy, Officer Brian, Dela Santos, and K9 Kira. Love you, Dada and Kira.