Update - Catawba, VA

Well, it's 6:15pm on Friday, June 15th, and we're calling from the Catawba Gas Station at mile 688.6, half mile from the trail on Virginia Route 624.



We've had an interesting several days on the trail since leaving Blacksburg. While we were in town there we think Lauren picked up a stomach bug, like the 24-48 hour whatever. So we got a late start out of town on Tuesday, and Wednesday she was feeling terrible the whole day wanting to puke. Yesterday she was back to normal, but today I came down with the same thing, but I'm not feeling as bad as she was. I've had slight nausea today.

[UPDATE: My worst day actually came later that night through the next day. It wasn't pretty, so I won't go into details here. Let's just say that it hit me harder than it did Lauren. Fortunately we both recovered quickly and are confident it was not Giardia, but something we picked up in town.]

We continue to make good progress despite the rain. It's fun to be on some of the old stomping grounds that we used to go to. We enjoyed dinner at Wind Rock the other night. Today we got to go to Dragon's Tooth which was completely socked-in by fog. Although we had nice weather years ago when we were there for a picnic dinner, today we were trying to move quickly just to stay warm as the mist and rain came down.



At points today the A.T. resembled more of a climbing wall than it did a hiking trail. Still, we enjoyed scampering around on the rocks, particularly carefully sice they were so wet and slippery. Tonight we are going to be camping just short of McAffee Knob and then Tinker Cliffs, which we're hoping to do tomorrow.



Through all the difficult going this week we've been set back one day from our projected schedule. We expect to see my Aunt Rebecca on Sunday afternoon.

As a side note about our quilt: As the temperatures have been getting warmer it's been getting too hot. We've appreciated the cooler light temperatures this week because we've actually been able to use the quilt without overheating. As an oversight I neglected to make plans for bug protection if the quilt truly becomes too hot. This week I've asked my mom to sew a net-tent to suspend under our tarp and mail it to us by the time we arrive in Waynesboro. Hopefully that's all working out and we'll have hot weather bug protection shortly.