Rediscovering America_ Exploring the Small Towns of Virginia & Maryland - Bill Burnham [9]
Pet-friendly: The Empire Motel is an older motel, but has recently been renovated, and accepts pets with an $8 charge. (887 Empire Drive, Exit 19 off I-81, tel. 276-628-7131, $)
Information
Abingdon Convention & Visitors Bureau, 335 Cummings Street, tel. 276-676-2282 or 800-435-3440, www.abingdon.com/tourism.
Premiere Event
Southwest Virginia’s best-known arts event, the Virginia Highlands Festival runs for two weeks in August, drawing 200,000 people in celebration of the handmade arts. There are demonstrations and displays of crafts, writing, photography, music and dance, as well as hot air balloon rides, wine tastings, children’s activities, and plenty of food. (tel. 276-623-5266 or 800-435-3440, www.va-highlands-festival.org)
Damascus
“Trail Town USA”
Bordered by Virginia’s finest mountain scenery and infused with the spirit of seekers and wanderers, Damascus is a picture-book town with a reputation that precedes itself. We first heard of its enchanting qualities while browsing Cave Spring House in Abingdon, where an artist painted a quick sketch for us of her hometown.
“I was hiking the Appalachian Trail up from Georgia,” she said. “We’d been hiking up a steep ascent, then suddenly came out into a view of the valley below. I could see white houses with front porches and tree-lined streets. I decided right then that was where I wanted to live. I got off the trail, and went no further. That was 10 years ago.”
TRIVIA: Virginia contains 560 miles of the AT, more than any other state. Of the 2,500 hikers who attempt the hike each year, only about 250 finish. The Virginia Creeper Trial is more of a draw for Damascus, bringing in as many as 600 bikers and hikers in a single weekend.
Around Town
It would be a full year before we set foot in town ourselves. We too came off a mountain slope – Iron Mountain in nearby Mount Rogers National Recreation Area – and quickly realized how that artist, an expatriate of Washington DC, found hospitality. Many homes double as part- or full-time bed & breakfasts that service AT thru-hikers, as well as the many day-trippers who come to enjoy the extensive recreation all around Damascus. And yes, nearly every home has a front porch, painted white, with a cat napping on a wicker chair or rocker.
Damascus, with slightly fewer than 1,000 people, embraces its nickname of “Friendliest Town on the AT.” The postmaster holds mail for thru-hikers and public computer terminals permit out-of-towners to receive news from home. Sixty percent of the town’s population are senior citizens. Many take in thru-hikers, offer them food, rides or a place to bed down.
Main Street doubles as the Appalachian Trail, and where the hiker leaves trees and wildflowers behind, they’ll find a “Friendship Path” instead. The fund-raising project allows folks to commission bricks from a local artist. Hand-fired and each with a unique design, they become a permanent record of special events and people with a connection to Damascus. Bricks memorialize beloved residents, celebrate anniversaries, and bear trail names of thru-hikers.
Each May Damascus plays hosts to anyone who ever hiked the AT, or even thought about it. Trail Days swells the town with 22,000 visitors and coincides with a time when the greatest number of northbound AT hikers reach Damascus on their 2,167-mile trek from Georgia to Maine. (Such is the draw, however, that thru-hikers who’ve already passed Damascus often backtrack.) A hiker talent show illustrates the life altering rite-of-passage that completing the trail has become. Poems, skits and songs are comedic or highly personal, but always heartfelt. Festivities end with a Main Street parade for hikers who gamely dodge water balloons lobbed at them by crowds on the sidewalk.
Recreation
Did we mention that Damascus’ other nickname is “Where trails cross”? Besides the AT, the Transcontinental