Section Hiker Lady to the rescue!

10-8-09 day 128
start: Partnership Shelter, VA
end: Troutdale Baptist Church Hostel, in Troutdale VA
daily mileage: 14.5
total mileage: 1666.1
 
No Money got out early and hitched into Marion for a resupply, but we'll meet up with him tonight at the hostel. We got started and found the hiking to be pretty easy today, and with our relatively early start we knew we'd get in to the hostel pretty early. We stopped for lunch at a stream and had fun filling up our water: Sea Monster stayed on the bridge about 15 feet over the water while I filled up the bottles and threw them up for him to catch. We took a nice long post-lunch break, with me reading (and eating copious amounts of super-discounted yogurt bars) and Sea Monster napping. Sea Monster was rudely awoken by a bee stinging his finger, just as No Money wandered by.
 
We also met up with the section hiker lady from the night before. She told us about her system of getting around, which is kind of interesting... she doesn't like carrying everything with her and she likes biking as well as hiking, so she drives to the point she'll end the day at, then rides her bike to where she'd like to begin hiking, hides the bike, and hikes to her car. Then the next morning she picks up the bike and starts all over! With all the driving and biking in the morning she gets a pretty late start hiking, but she seems to enjoy it, so more power to her!
 
We got to the road. Lo and behold, it was one of those friggen complicated intersections that I mentioned a few posts ago, where the companion forces a complicated situation to conform to it's very simple intersection format, and in so doing destroys all useful information. As a consequence, we stood there trying to get a hitch in the wrong direction for at least half an hour. Finally someone going the other way stopped, asked where we were going, and told us that Troutdale was the opposite way we were hitching... but by incredibly good luck, the way he was going! So we got into town.
 
After checking out the quaint general store, we wandered over to the church hostel. It's nothing fancy, but does provide showers and is free, so we're happy! No Money finally got in a few hours later (weird, since he was ahead of us) and we found out that he had been walking for miles the wrong way down the road (the same place we got mixed up), and was rescued by none other than the section hiker lady, who was also going to the hostel that night and just happened to see him as she drove past! Good job, section hiker lady!