Woke up and had an awesome hotel breakfast and then hit the pavement. We were in the town of Smithfield, VA. Apparently it’s famous for ham. It’s a thing. Nasty, smelly pig trucks everywhere. Yuck.
There was a ton of traffic too. Ww thought this was supposed to be a small town but it’s not. This is the most people we’ve seen in weeks. Until we got out of town and onto thw back roads it was actually pretty dangerous. We didn’t like it. But once we got out to the country again we were fine though.
It was beautiful. Rolling hills and farms everywhere. We saw a bald eagle in flight too. It was cool.
We came to a little town called Bacon’s Castle. There was a little peanut stand that we went into and got some peanuts. The staff were really nice and the peanuts were really good. There was a store next door and we grabbed a cold soda to go with the peanuts.
We sat out front for a few minutes and everyone that we talked to was affected by this epidemic. Crazy.
We left there and walked by some extremely beautiful views. Wheat fields for miles. Open sky and waves of wheat blowing in the wind. An occasional farm house or barn to help the picture.
We walked and walked. We came up to a state park. We had already walked 20 miles and it would’ve been a great place to camp but we would’ve had to walk .8 miles out of the way and then .8 miles back in the morning. We found a church on the map 1.6 miles up ahead and decided that if we were going to walk that distance then it might as well be in the right direction. We headed for the church.
We got there and it was a good spot. The problem was that it was only 4:30 pm. I hate stopping this early. I tried to convince Stick that we should keep going. It was 3 miles to the ferry that takes us across the river. I called the guy and he said that we could camp there. Stick agreed and I’m glad he did. It was the better choice since we had everything working in our favor to keep going. Gotta get it while the gettin is good.
We did those 3 miles and they were pretty rough but we’ve been through worse. We fought our way to the ferry and talked to the guy who was going to let us camp there. He was awesome amd very helpful. He had a good spot for us but it was right off the road and would be very noisy. He tried to convince us to try the other side.
So we hopped on the ferry and rode the boat 2.1 miles over the river. We landed in Jamestown. Where that whole Pocahontas thing went down. Lots of history. There was an old campground turned into a picnic park right on the river. It was only opened until sunset but we figured we’d stay here tonight.
Our plan was to go ahead and eat dinner and then watch the sunset. Then wait until the park ranger came by to do his sweep through and ask if we could camp here. We were pretty confident that we would be able to talk our way into it.
Well the sunset was incredible. It’s a rare occurrence on an East Coast hike. We took it all in and I waited as long as I could and then i got antsy so i started setting my tent up. Stick did the same.
As we were almost finished, here comes the ranger truck. We were like “dangit, game time.” We got ready to talk to him but he just drove right by us without stopping.
We figured he was going to do his usual rounds and then come back to talk to us. Well he came back around and the same thing happened. He drove right by us.
It was pretty dark but had he been paying attention at all he would’ve seen us. I think we were in the clear.
We waited for a bit but he never came back. Sweet!
Now we can rest easily at a beautiful and safe spot along the James River.
Love it.
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