Stanimals Part 2

Day 108

Last night was surprisingly warm as compared to our previous week. Woke up at sunrise and knew we had an incredibly short day today. We are liking our nero strategy to maximize our time in town and experience some of these hostels we have been hearing about from NOBOs since Maine.

We cruised the flat 1.7 to the James River bridge. Eric has memories of jumping off this bridge in 2011. Charlie arrived right on time and dropped off 4 other hikers. We recognized Soups and chatted a bit before we took their places in the car and headed to the hostel. We drove through downtown Glasgow which included a general store, restaurant and post office.

Stanimals Hiker Hostel in Glasgow is a smaller operation than Waynesboro as fewer hikers come through and the town itself is much smaller.  Charlie operates a hostel the way hostels should be operated.  He is organized, keeps the house clean, and most importantly just seems to care and enjoy the company of hikers.  We can’t say enough nice things about Charlie and Stanimals Hostel in Glasgow.  We enjoy the southern hospitality from a guy who grew up in Danvers, MA.  Yet again, another Massachusetts native!

We spent the afternoon doing the usual chores: laundry, shower, drying our tent, etc. We enjoyed the mountain view from the backyard along with the very friendly and vocal hound dog next door. We got a ride from one of the section hikers staying at the hostel to the only restaurant in town. The quality of Scotto’s pizza was a great surprise! We enjoyed everything about it and were even tempted to return later at night for a second pizza.

We resupplied and headed back to the hostel to relax. We spent a few hours on the porch talking with Linguini and just enjoying the views and comfortable weather. Charlie surprised us with a peach cobbler for dessert. We were able to get the one private room at the hostel and were delightfully surprised at the spacious comfortable bed. We could get used to this hostel life!

Day 109

We slept well in our massive king sized bed in our private room but we had a 20 mile day ahead of us so we couldn’t lay around for long. We started the coffee and Charlie made us all big fluffy blueberry pancakes. They were just excellent and got us carbed up for a long day.

Charlie did a good job rounding us all up to leave at 8:15AM. We really did enjoy our stay at Stanimals and would definitely consider stopping in again if we did some sort of section hike or thru-hike again later in life.

Back at trailhead, we set off south over the James River Footbridge.  We also got a chuckle that the footbridge was dedicated to William Foot.  So in a sense this could be called the Foot Footbridge.  We leap frogged Linguini a couple times but ultimately lost him when he stopped to refill water at a stream.  We loved seeing the ever increasing foliage. The green is becoming less and less and more leaves cover the trail.

We moved alright with our heavy town bags but our feet started to feel the mileage as the hours rolled by. We saw some beautiful vistas but then the fog started to roll in. We are expecting rain tonight and plan to stay in the shelter to stay dry.

We walked through the guillotine, an impressive boulder stuck between rock formations and ascended Apple Orchard Mountain. Sadly no apples for us.  However, this summit was once an Air Force radar base.

We made it to camp and had a nice fire.  The rain spritzed on and off but we stayed dry inside the shelter and could feel the warmth of the fire.

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Comments 1

  • d20 : Oct 19th

    My wife and I really enjoyed both Stanimals locations and this stretch of the trail.

    Reply

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