I texted with him last on Monday. He and his friends spent the night in Waynesboro, VA Monday night. He was very impressed with Waynesboro in it's "hiker friendliness." He has been really surprised at the lack of it in other trail towns. But a stranger there just invited all five of them to spend the night at his house, ordered them pizza, gave them a place to shower, wash their clothes and sleep! How great is that? Thanking God for the hospitality of strangers and that it's still alive somewhere!
And just as I wrote that, I freaked out that I hadn't actually heard from him since before he spent the night with a complete stranger!! I remembered that I texted him yesterday and never heard back. I texted him, called Jon, couldn't get either. But Jon finally called me back. He said that he received a text from Trand yesterday that said, "I'm on top of a mountain with one bar of service. I've had nothing out here, but I wanted to let you know that I'm on track to still meet you in Glasgow on Friday."
Okay, thank you, Jesus!! And before you think that I'm the worst mom in the world for not worrying until now, can I just tell you that this week has been insanely crazy busy plus the fact that it's not uncommon for him to go a couple of days without texting because of service. In PA, he had service everyday because he was in and out of towns all the time. But in VA, he's been in the Shenendoah's for a very long time. He's definitely enjoying the views of VA much more than PA!! :)
Jon is going up tomorrow evening to see him in Glasgow, VA. Last week he pushed the guys he was with really hard. Haha!! They went 160 miles last week. That's an average of about 23 miles a day. I know one day they did 28. He told me that Firefoot informed him that WOULD NOT be happening again!! ;) Makes me laugh. But from Waynesboro on Monday to Glasgow on Friday was going to be a relatively easy hike and not too long. So I'm sure the guys were happy that Trand had someone meeting him there! The plan is for them to spend the night there and then take all the guys to find "A Walk in the Woods" at a movie theater somewhere. Although, after looking around the area online, I'm not sure that will happen. The biggest theater we can find only has 3 movies playing!! :) The guys basically want to go see the movie so that they can make fun of it. They kind of all make fun of Bill Bryson, not because he didn't even hike half of the trail, but because he didn't even hike half the trail and then wrote a book about it which has become THE book that everyone associates with the AT. Please don't be offended if you love that book. Just relaying the way these 18-26 year olds are thinking.
After the movie, Jon plans to drive home Saturday, and the boys will get back on the trail. As I said earlier, the roads in VA don't cross the trail every few miles like in PA so it would be another two days before he could pick him up and see him again. He thought about hiking with him, but we couldn't figure out how to leave his car in one place and then get it after hiking a couple of days! My parents had been planning to go this weekend since my dad would have Labor Day off. But we decided it wouldn't really be worth it for them to drive 8 1/2 hours to see him for one night. They were really disappointed though as they had planned a fun trip to see him.
His spirits seem high when I do get to text with him. And when he texts, I drop everything that I'm doing and spend however long that he'll spend with me! I miss him so much, and I'm thankful that he only has about a little more than a month left!! He had hiked 1328 miles as of Monday. Crazy to think. I posted a picture of where he is and how much he's done right before posting this so if you'd like to check, look at that!! The kids are getting so excited!!
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