Contra-dancing, Zip-lines, Caterpillar Poo, AYCE...

I feel like a lot has happened in a week. So, Saturday night at Trail Days, we went contra-dancing. Missed the beginner workshop (Oops, milkshakes seemed more important at the time) so we jumped right in after watching one of the dances, thinking we would be able to catch right up. Haha. It sort of worked. I did one dance and was dizzy and exhausted! Lots of spinning and pretending to know what I was doing. I am not exactly the most graceful person so it was quite comical to say the least. But we had a lot of fun (Sparky got hooked though, and danced 2 other dances!) and now I can say I've contradanced in Virginia! So, there is a little paragraph in our trail guide that talks about the "Captain's" house, and that you have to take a zip-line across a creek to get there. Once you are there, you are allowed to camp in his yard, whether or not he is home. Of course, we were in! Fortunately, another person in our group had found the zip-line (she was ahead of us) and left us a note on a piece of paper and stuck in under a stick on the trail so we would know where to go (otherwise there is no way we would have found it). So the zip-line---was a pulley system, we sat on the swing and then pulled ourselves across the creek. We got to the other side, and set up our tents. The "Captain" came home awhile later, told us the door is always open, that we could use whatever we needed. He said we could sleep inside, watch TV, whatever just to close the door in the morning since he would be leaving at 5:30am. Talk about trail magic! The next morning, we all took hot showers (he even left the towels out for us!), watched a little "Prince of Bel-Air" and then headed back out to the trail...the crazy random things that happen on the AT... So the other day, we are about 4 miles from a shelter, and there are millions of dangling caterpillars all over the trail! Now, my brother and I used to love those little critters, and would keep them as pets, feeding them leaves, and giving them sticks to crawl on...for some reason though, as I was walking through swarms of them, I noticed that my attitude towards them has changed since I was 10. My trekking poles soon turned into swatters as I hiked down the trail. Now, I thought that all of the noise was simply the caterpillars eating the leaves and leaves falling on the trail, but soon was informed by another hiker that the noise was the caterpillar poo raining from the sky. EWWWWW! So, as I laid in my sleeping bag that night, I was lulled to sleep by the sound of caterpillar poo... Q: When do hikers set an alarm-clock? A: When they know that AYCE is 22.7 miles away and closes at 8 pm. Haha, so we set an alarm for the first time a few nights ago for 6:30 am. Yikes. "The Homeplace" is an AYCE restaurant in Catawba, VA that we have heard about for hundreds of miles literally, ever since we stepped foot in VA. One hiker called it "the best thing about Virginia." A group of about 8 of us got there around 7pm and devoured the food---ham, roast beef, fried chicken of course, mac and cheese, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, cherry cobbler, etc etc etc. And they just keep on bringing it. Now they must be used to thru-hikers because 1: they gave us our own room, and 2: they gave us our own waitress. Now, it gets even funnier because after eating that much food, it is not possible to hike much farther so...guess where we slept? In the gazebos right outside of the restaurant! Crazy! One of the guys in our group asked if there was camping around, and they said we could camp right there. It was perfect. Eat till we couldn't move and then roll out of the restaurant 100 meters and pass out. Well, we did rock in the rocking chairs on the porch a bit first. Enough with the stories...as for the actual hiking (haha yes, that is the first priority out here--we have passed the 700 mile mark), it has been incredible. Has been sunny for over a week! It sprinked a bit this morning but that was it. We have had incredible views, seen a few deer, and got to chat with a bunch of weekend hikers out for Memorial day weekend. Till the next town, T-Toe and Sparky