May 5. Appalachian Trail from Va. 311 at Catawba Mountain to the crest of Beckner Gap and back. 6.2 miles. A close-to-home section we almost never do, climbing up a ways and then making its way along Sawtooth Ridge for a pleasant and gentle walk. A good day for The Greatest Day Hiker Of Them All for the simple reason that the wildflowers were beginning to show themselves all over the place, with her pauses-to-look allowing me to keep up better than usual.
May 6. North Mountain Trail from Va. 311 across from the Dragon's Tooth Trail parking lot up onto the ridge and back. 5 miles. The former route of the Appalachian Trail remains a well-maintained but generally empty trail. This spur-of-the-moment, beat-the-sunset walk was marked by an even-stronger-than-usual climb from The Day Hiker and a fine dinner on a rock looking westward as the day chilled significantly with the fall of evening.
May 13. North Mountain Trail from Va. 779 across from the Andy Layne Trail parking lot up onto the ridge and back. 5 miles. A good walk up one end of the the North Mountain Trail deserves a parallel one up the other end. The trail had been re-routed since our last visit here a couple of years back, and it was not until we came back down that we realized our difficulty in finding blazes on the way up was the result of having been on the pre-re-route trail.
May 20. Appalachian Trail from Va. 621 southward to a rock outcropping on Sinking Creek Mountain and back. 7.8 miles. There are many sections of the trail around Roanoke that give repeated faux versions of a destination point (with all those false teeth as you head toward Dragon's Tooth from the south being perhaps the most significant), and this is another, with the sky visible to the right over the ridge for what seems like miles before the trail finally crests the ridge and then provides a series of minor viewpoints as it heads on south. We picked an early one for our lunch stop.
May 22. Bottom Creek Gorge Nature Conservancy Trails. 5.3 miles. Every now and again, it's fun to pack up for dinner-on-the-trail on a weekday evening as the days are getting longer and longer. But what always starts out as seeming to be plenty of time inevitably contracts back to just-barely-enough when you factor in getting the meal ready, the drive and then the hike. These easy trails do pass underfoot rapidly (especially with The Day Hiker out front), but from our meal point at the overlook of the falls (second highest in Virginia, the signs proclaim), the hike back was a race against the dusk, which ended in a draw.
May 28. Appalachian Trail at Va. 614 to the Glenwood Horse Trail to the Little Cove Mountain Trail to 614 loop. 6.5 miles. The Cove Mountain/Little Cove Mountain area stays in the mind of The Greatest Day Hiker by virtue of its having been the one place where we were both careless enough to become pretty well eat-up with chigger bites, a couple of years back. On this day the area presented another plague of sorts, with the weedy Glenwood Horse Trail section offering a large tick population apparently waiting for some horses to come along, but willing to settle for bare human legs. We both picked three or four off ourselves as we walked, and then went to full-inspection mode at home after we found several more each. The hike itself is a good loop, with a nice climb, good views and a gentle descent back to the half-mile-plus along 614 to get back to the starting point at a swimming hole in Jennings Creek. We had come upon several thru-hikers headed north at the start, with each one asking or commenting on how far it was to the jump-in-the-water.
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