Damascus to Thomas Knob Shelter

We stayed at the Place for 2 nights while in Damascus. Its a cheap (it cost us $4 a person donation) and comfortable place to stay if you are in Damascus. Everyone on the trail talks about it so we figured it was worth a try. Its run by a local Methodist church and the facilities are really basic - bunk with no mattress, shower, cooking area. Some call Damascus the best trail town, but I think that I prefer Hot Springs. On the north side of town the trail follows close to the Virginia Creeper Trail and even shares a couple of long bridges with the famous bike path. We spotted this snake on a bridge.
The Creeper trail looked like fun but we decided to just sit around on our day off. On the way out of town we left a little trail magic in a stream. I hope someone enjoyed it.
We stayed in really nice shelter the first night out called Lost Mountain Shelter and had it all to ourselves.

We had beautiful weather on our way up to the top of Mt. Rodgers (Virginia's highest peak) and Thomas Knob shelter. We walked through a few fields that had ripe apples which made for great snacks.
The following is a view from Thomas Knob shelter on Mt. Rodgers.
Going into Grayson Highlands State Park (probably the best state park ever)
The trail on before entering Grayson Highlands State Park.

Favorite Places - #1 Grayson Highlands

We couldnt decide on a #1 favorite place that we walked through on the trail but it is definently between 2 places. The Grayson Highlands was an area near Mt. Rodgers which is the highest peak in Virginia. After you make that climb you descend slightly to the Highlands area. We stayed in a really nice shelter that night on our way to the highlands and had a beautiful view of the sunset. After that the area is comprised of about a 5 or 6 mile stretch through open grasslands at very high elevations (for the east coast) of over 5000 feet. We had beautiful views the entire time of the surrounding mountains. There were large rock outcroppings that we walked over/through along the way including "fat-man squeeze". ALong the edges of the grasslands there were spruce/fur trees that filled the air with an amazing fragrance. Perhaps one of the neatest aspects were the "wild" ponies that were released in order to maintain the grasslands. They were very friendly (most likely from being fed by hikers) and would even approached us as we made our way through that amazing area.

Picture of Ponies


The Shelter where we sletp in the Highlands - we were visited that night by some poines at about 3 am that came up in between the shelter and the picnic table


Some lovely rocks


Walking through "fatman squeeze", one of the rock formations


Family of wild ponies


Brian and his magical pony friend


Some more pretty mountains