The Roof Is On Fire

I am now in Catawba, VA 695 miles and 50 days of hiking from Springer. My second pair of shoes are now 420 trail miles old and starting to show there age. I am hoping that they last about 10 more days until Trail Days in Damascus. There should be a bunch of gear manufacturers there, and hopefully I can get a deal on my next pair of shoes.
Leaving Pearisburg my goal was the Homeplace restaurant in Catawba. This is an ALCE southern food restaurant that is only open Thursday through Sunday. So I had to get 75 miles done in 3 and a half days. It was a push, and Daddy-O and Peacock decided that they did not want to do it, so they are a day and a half behind me now. I arrived this afternoon with Rocko (Leave No Trace Guru), Shadow Cast (High Speed, Low Drag), Vagabond (theearthexpedition.com) and Peakaxe (Big Stick into Little Pieces). Unfortunately this restaurant was not as vegetarian friendly as I had hoped, and Shadow and Rocko decided not to eat with us. However Vagabond, Peakaxe and I made up for them. Two fried chicken breasts, 3 pieces of country ham, 3 biscuits with apple butter, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, pinto beans, coleslaw, 3 peach cobblers with ice cream and an hour later, I was stuffed. This place routinely gets voted the best restaurant on the AT, and so far I agree. It was wonderful. I was not hungry for a good three or four hours later. What made it even better was that I had been thinking about fried chicken for the previous week and it was great. When we got there we were the only hikers around. Almost everyone was dressed up for church. It was an amazing contrast, they all smelt so clean. We were an odity to them and we recieved lots of questions, and everyone was friendly and curious.
The first night out of Pearisburg I stayed at a shelter with the above mentioned folk that did not have a roof. Last year a tree fell on the shelter and broke the roof. There had been some clean up done and there was a ot of available firewood. This shelter also had a fireplace "inside." We cleared enough space for five of us to sleep and then went to work on the fire. Because of the lack of roof on the shelter we were able to directly access the top of the fireplace. We started with small pieces of roof from the bottom and threw a couple of logs and large boards down from the top and went to town. We managed to get flames coming out four feet above the top of the chimney, about 16 feet above the bottom of the fireplace. It was awesome and I have the pictures to prove it.
I am currently at the house of a "trail angel." Barnabus hiked in '06 and decided to help out hikers this year. He left a bunch of cards in the shelters around here and with the biscuits he left at a road crossing. He picked us up after lunch at the homeplace, drove us to the grocery store and tomorrow with take us back to the trailhead and "slack" us by taking our packs up to Troutville, 19 miles up the trail. Then it is time for me to take a zero day, so I will probably add another update soon.
ps, check out Vagabond's website, www.theearthexpedition.com, and what he is doing