1000 k’s in the bag – 20 May

Early this morning, before 8h00, we clocked our 1000th kilometer.

When I walked into the Damascus Outfitter (think Outdoor Warehouse hiking section compressed into 200sqm) ten days ago, the big (really big, not fat, just big) owner with his bushy hair and reflective sunglasses said to me “hey, what’s your name?”. He didn’t ask if I was a thru-hiker, I must have had that forlorn look. He just said “Jozi, I don’t know if anybody recently told you they were proud of you, but I’m proud of you. You walked all the way from Springer mountain to Damascus and that is something to be proud of”. I squeezed out a thanks before my lip started quivering and the tears started rolling. I know it’s silly but I just needed somebody who knew how tough it was to say to me “girl, you are doing well”.

Today, when we hit 1000km, I slowed down a bit, falling behind Trevor so he couldn’t see the tears streaming down my face – he just wouldn’t understand why I get emotional and cry at a happy time.

We won’t be arrogant because we have 2600km to go and that is still a loooong way and a lot can go wrong, but for now we are happy and thankful for what we managed to achieve.

Below some of the moments out of our day as we walked to Pearisburg

Yesterday’s push paid off as we arrived in Pearisburg around 14h30. We have showered and I am now doing laundry, after which we will get shopping done and see if we can find a place with beer and food. This isn’t a big town and many places are closed on a Monday.

This is just a refuel, not a zero, we will head back to the trail early tomorrow morning.

Though it was a “down” day (descended more than ascended) we still had to climb 700m and the downhills were tough on our sore feet, but we are both in much better spirits than yesterday