Taking A Walk

by Dwayne Phillips

Today we walked through Dublin and Pulaski, Virginia. We covered about 17 miles. The weather continues to be great.

Most of the walking today was through the country side. We started north of Dublin and a railroad track was 50 feet to my left. No trains though. I saw a large house trailer part. More than 100 trailers. These trailer parks are becoming more prevalent the past week.

Dublin is a small rural town re-growing about Route 11. There is an old Dublin that grew around “old route 11” which is parallel to and a block away from Route 11. I took a picture of the old train station there and put it on Dublin’s Wikipedia page. Dublin also has an exit from Interstate 81, so there is a separate economy two miles away with motels, restaurants, and a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Pulaski is a much bigger town with its own suburbs and such. The noteworthy site in town is the old courthouse with its clock tower. Downtown is clean, but has few businesses there. It has some offices related to the courthouse, some charitable places, and a few political campaign offices. This doesn’t look healthy. I put a photo of Main Street on Pulaski’s Wikipedia page.

Pulaski is a city that is struggling to stop aging. There is some success in places, but age is showing poorly in many others.

The surprise in Pulaski is the VW graveyard shown here. I have no idea what this place is, but here it is. There are over 60 VW vans parked here within inches of one another. These are not the 1960s vans, but the 1970s models. Does anyone know what this is?

Let’s have a contest for the best caption of that photo.

While walking in Pulaski, I could see hills where Route 11 went south. I dreaded that. It was quite an experience. I checked several sources and my estimate is that I walked up an 800-foot rise. There is an overlook place at the top of the hill (not sure what the hill is called?). The Draper valley is to the south. Beautiful. I “ran” down the other side of the hill (only a 500-foot drop). Running may not be the right word. I kind of shuffled my feet with tall steps and let gravity do the rest. It was fun.

One side note for the day. For some reason the roads had banked gravel shoulders. We struggled walking on these most of the day. The result was blisters on the outside of our heels on both feet. I hope they go away during the night. Again, THERE WILL BE NO PHOTOS OF BLISTERS ON THIS BLOG – but these are beauties!