- Miles 470.7-472.9 (2.1 mi.)
- Total ascent: 833′; descent: 223′
We spent today, which we’d planned to be a “zero,” riding the 35-mile Virginia Creeper Trail in its entirety.
Known around Damascus as “the trail that saved our town,” the VCT is advertised everywhere: at the four-plus bike rental shops, the visitor center, the diner, the nearest outfitter, and our bed & breakfast.
We at breakfast at the diner, not 500 feet from our B&B, around 8:30. Because our host owned them both, our stay came with free breakfast: chicken and waffles for me, and a stack of pancakes for Rachel. The owner stood at the grill, frantically flipping bacon and apologizing for being understaffed.
One side note: Just about every retail and food service establishment from Georgia to this point can’t seem to hire enough staff. The McDonalds in Erwin, Tennessee, was offering to pay $50 cash simply for interviewing, whether the interviewee was hired or not. One Dollar General, in which town I can’t remember, halved its hours due to staff shortages.
After breakfast, which we ate at the yellow Formica bar atop black stools, we walked the main drag of Damascus back to our room. There, we ran into Maki, who’d expressed interest in our ride.
Maki worried he wouldn’t be able to pack up in time to make Bicycle Junction’s 10 a.m. shuttle — a deadline we were confident we could meet, and did — so we walked the few dozen feet, grabbed our packs at the room, and checked out.
Bicycle junction was the sort of place sided with wood clapboard and surrounded with a homemade wood porch, on which and inside the bicycles stood. We rented two Jamis mountain bikes, helped the attendant secure them to the shuttle’s trailer, and jumped in the van.
On the many car rides I’ve taken with Rachel, I’ve never seen her quite as green-faced as she was on the ride up Whitetop Mountain. Mountain roads are never easy for the car-sick, but this one’s curves were so sharp the vehicle-trailer combination could barely keep all wheels on the road.
After 30 minutes of vehicle switchbacks, we couldn’t believe how even the VCT was. It wasn’t flat, per se — more like a pool table with the legs chopped on a short side — but it was much more so than we were used to. We were able to coast the entire way back to Damascus, save for one road crossing that required a little bit of pedaling and rock-dodging. The rest was paved in pea gravel and shaded by rhododendron; in fact, it was better maintained than any of the buildings nearby, a telling sign of the area’s reliance on tourism and recreation. Food and beveridge stands, most closed due to Covid, dotted the trail.
We didn’t see any of the five riders who’d been in the shuttle with us on our trip back to Damascus. A Bicycle Junction employee commented we rode quickly, though we’d spent much of the 17-mile leg riding our brakes. We’d even sat beside a creek on a shared AT-VCT section for 10 minutes, yet saw only AT hikers, none of whom we recognized. The AT, we’d discover over the next couple of days, crosses the VCT at no fewer than three points.
As soon as we arrived at Bicycle Junction, around 1 p.m., the owner helped us re-load our bikes to do the second 17-mile leg. We were, to our surprise, the only afternoon riders; our driver told us 90% of people only do the first 17-mile leg, which is easier and more beautiful than the one between Abingdon and Damascus. Most people who do the entire thing, our driver claimed, were foreigners, and particularly Russian nationals visiting family in the Mid-Atlantic.
We learned the unspoken reason, upon riding it, why many don’t bother do the Abingdon-Damascus leg: It’s surrounded by McMansions and a golf course. Only closer to Damascus did the trail return to the woods and, later, cattle pastures. In at least four places, spring-loaded livestock gates demanded we dismount our bikes to pass.
Nearing Damascus, we debated another stop at Food City, the grocery store where we’d eaten dinner the night prior. We biked on, ultimately, and were back in Damascus about two hours after we began our second leg. Altogether, the 35-mile ride took us barely four hours.
After we returned our bikes, we walked briefly on the VCT to reach the AT proper. The AT jogged left into a forest up a steep staircase (but a staircase nonetheless, thank goodness).
Our knees ached with a full load of food and water. We sucked liberally on our bladders, both because we were hot and because our knees insisted we get our packs back below the 40-pound mark.
In less than an hour, Rachel and I found a campsite we’d seen on Guthook. But somebody who obviously wasn’t a hiker seemed to be living there, and so we moved on.
We found an unmarked site another mile up the trail, tight in the laurel and blackberry bushes, and put down our packs.
There, unbelievably, were three unopened PBRs, evidently left by someone who decided beer wasn’t worth its weight. They were hidden in such a way that, in order to notice them, one would have to camp at the site (rather than simply stop for a sit). It was the second campsite in three nights where I’d found abandoned beer.
The trail provides, as they say. Perhaps bicycling and beer was just the rest day we needed.
