Taking A Walk

by Dwayne Phillips

While chewing some raisins Saturday morning, a tooth fell out of my mouth.

What? Yes, a tooth fell out of my mouth. A crowned tooth broke from its meager roots and fell out.

I was fortunate to find a dentist in Reston, Virginia. She had bad news and good news. The bad news was that she and a dental surgeon could fix me for about the same price that would erase the national debt. The good news is that I can go for a few weeks without doing anything.

We will began walking in earnest on Monday morning the 15th as planned. I will try to arrange a Monday or Friday appointment with the dentist who orginally placed the crown on the tooth. I guess the fix will be the same, but I hope the price of an established dentist will be lower than a dentist just starting her practice.

She did have the nicest dental suite I have ever seen.

by Dwayne Phillips

Karen and I walked from Purcellville to Berryville, Virginia. Purcellville is in Loudon County while Berryville is the county seat of Clarke County. This is 15 miles and took six hours of walking.

Here is a photo of the Clarke County Courthouse in Berryville.

This walk was all done on Route 7. This was the first time we walked on the side of the road instead of on a trail. I was wary of walking into traffic, but this was easier than I expected. (I tend to expect the worst.)

There were several highlights to this walk. First, we climbed the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge. Route 7 ascends about 500 feet up to Snickers Gap. That is about half an hour of walking up  steep hill (maybe a 40 story building). I was tired when I reached the gap.

Just on the western side of the gap, the Appalachian Trail crossed Route 7. I believe this will be the only time we will cross this trail. Our walk will parallel it for much of the way.

We descended into the Shenandoah Valley crossing the Shenandoah River on Route 7.

Butterflies – there were many butterflies on the side of the road today.

I stopped in at the Hill High Orchard store just west of Round Hill, Virginia. This store has been here forever and is a landmark on Route 7. Their specialty is pie, so I bought a slice of peach pie. $3 – ouch! Oh well, they need to make a living, too.

Just east of Berryville I met 100 motorcycles. At first I thought this was part of Rolling Thunder, but today was Labor Day and Rolling Thunder in on Memorial Day. Just a group of motorcycle riders out on a holiday in the great weather.

I was tired after today’s walk. Six hours and 15 miles is the longest day so far. Extra fatigue from the long uphill climb. I don’t think we’ll have such a climb for quite a while. We will now be walking in the Shenandoah valley for several hundred miles.

I put two photos on Wikipedia. One was the Clarke County Courthouse (in the Berryville page) and the other was the Round Hill United Methodist Church (established 1889) in the Round Hill page.

Equipment – today was the first day I used my Eddie Bauer backpack. It works quite well. I bought this as the Reston store when it was on sale.

by Dwayne Phillips

Now at least I am in the right calendar year.

On this Saturday, I walked from Leesburg to Purcellville, Virginia. This was ten miles on the W&OD trail. I walked alone and completed this in 3 1/2 hours. That is a speed of three miles per hour, so I probably walked too fast.

This walk segment was the first time I brought my camera with me. I took several photos and put them on pages in Wikipedia. One is a photo of the train station in Purcellville at the end of the trail. Another is a photo of a church building in the town of Hamilton, Virginia which is a little to the east of Purcellville.

Here is a photo of the Stone Bridge at Clarkes Gap. This is the highest point on the W&OD Trail.

The weather was great. I started at 65 degrees and finished at 75 degrees.

I saw a lot of bicycle riders, especially at both ends in the towns.

Purcellville is the western end of the W&OD trail. The only trouble is that I parked my van at the wrong spot in Purcellville. I wandered about for half an hour trying to find it. Three stops to consult my map led me to the right place.

Tip for the future: pay attention to the where you park.

Some history: Leesburg, Hamilton, and Purcellville used to be in “horse country” in Virginia. Slowly and surely, they are becoming suburbs of Washington D.C. I find this to be a shame as this is beautiful country.I wince when I see 100 aluminum-sided townhouses in a row.

by Dwayne Phillips

This day was farther back on the calendar than I remember.

Karen walked with me and we traversed the W&OD trail (this links to the Friends of the W&OD and this links to the Wikipedia article on it) from Virginia Route 28 into the town of Leesburg, Virginia. This took us out of Fairfax County and into Loudon County Virginia.

The walk was ten miles and this took us four hours of walking. That included sitting beside the trail for 20 minutes while eating sandwiches. The weather was pleasant in the mid-60s and cloudy.

This was a nice day. The walking slower as Karen has shorter legs than I and walks a little slower. I would be better served to walk her pace all the time, but I tend to walk as fast as I can. That is to my detriment.

Interesting landscape. Between Ashburn and Leesburg we walked past a rock quarry – Luck Stone. From that point westward, we say large rock everywhere in the countryside and along the trail. They had to have blasted through the rock to build the original railroad bed.

Equipment note:

I wore my new L.L. Bean hiking socks. These are great. My feet feel much better in them than in the regular white athletic socks. I wear these around the house when my feet are tired. There is something about the way they squeeze parts of my feet that is comforting.

by Dwayne Phillips

First surprise – it doesn’t seem like almost a year ago that I did my first steps on this walk, but my records show that to be the case. I walked four days widely separated by the calendar as kind of a warm up. This wasn’t so much a physical warm-up, but more a test of equipment and the mental aspect of the trip.

I walked from the house to the intersection of Virginia Highway 28 and the Washington and Old Dominion Trail (this links to the Friends of the W&OD and this links to the Wikipedia article on it). The Friends website is really good as it gives detailed maps marking benches, picnic tables, and bathrooms.

The walk was about five miles and I completed it in two hours. The weather was in the mid 80s.

I walked through the town of Herndon, Virginia. This is next door to my starting town of Reston so there wasn’t much new to see.

Equipment notes:

Don’t wear regular white athletic socks. The skin on the bottoms of my feet felt like they were about to tear.

I wore my new Tilley hat. It works really well at blocking the sun.

by Dwayne Phillips

I want to walk down U.S. Highway 11 from Northern Virginia to Louisiana.

I’ve had this desire for several years now. This all started in 1980 when I graduated college and moved from Southeast Louisiana to the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C. With breaks for graduate school and living outside the U.S., I (then my wife and I) drove from Northern Virginia to Louisiana and back twice a year.

We drove on Interstates 81, 40, 75,and 59. We would see exit signs pointing to the small towns all along this route. Often, the small towns were on U.S. Highway 11. I looked at this on the maps and learned that 11 paralleled most of our drive on the Interstates. Perhaps one day, we would drive the route on Highway 11 instead of the Interstates. That would be interesting. But then somehow I thought that it would be more interesting to walk along Highway 11.

Well, here we are. The time to walk won’t be any better for us. Inspired by friends who have hiked the Appalachian Trail and by books of travel and walking, we are doing this. We are walking down Highway 11 from Northern Virginia to Louisiana. This is about 1,100 miles.

Phase 1: Virginia

Life has a way of altering plans. So it is with a little regret, that we are breaking our walk into phases. Phase 1 has begun: Northern Virginia to the Virginia–Tennessee border. This is about 350 miles, and we should be able to do this in 30 days of walking. It will take us a third of the way to Louisiana.

I hope that Phases 2 and 3 will occur during 2009.

Phase 2: The Virginia–Tennessee Border to Birmingham, Alabama

Phase 3: Birmingham, Alabama into Louisiana