Richmond Run: Day 3

Pohick Bay, Woodbridge, Leesylvania, Cherry Hill, Dumfries

Total and catastrophic tent sleep failure. I did everything wrong here. First, I made a late decision to ditch my pad before leaving on my plod because it was too bulky. I’d known to buy an ultralite pad but hadn’t worried too much about dimensions. This was stupid. When I practiced walking with the pad, it threw the weight of my whole setup off. I also set up my tent in my backyard, and with the soft grass a sleeping bag was enough. This is such an unbelievable rookie mistake that people joke about it on the internet. According to conventional hiking wisdom, tent sleeping takes a few days of adjustment even with a pad.

The ground at the campsite is incredibly hard, hard enough that I was barely able to drive in my stakes. My second mistake was drinking. In general, drinking in pursuit of sleep is always a mistake. This is funny because you can have this argument with yourself 10,000 times in 38 years of life, and it always works out the same and yet the rationalizations persist.

My version goes something like this: sure drunk sleep is worse sleep, but alcohol can assist in getting you to bed in the first place. This is the story I sold myself Friday night before trying to sleep at my campsite, and for the umpteenth time in my life, it didn’t work. I was up until about 2 and then had hazy, interrupted sleep until 5. At 5, I gave up and decided if I could do all my walking before noon at least I’d miss the worst of the heat.

By 5:30 I have all my stuff packed and I spend about ten minutes looking at my bag wondering why I’m even doing this. I take a shower at the joint campsite bathroom and luckily it’s early enough that it’s empty. Around the drain of the filthy shower are about 1000 mosquitos, most of them dead but some still alive. Various other bugs I can’t identify are eating them. I flash to the Werner Herzog clip from The Amazon where he discusses the murderous orgy of violence that is found in nature. Bad sleep and a hangover can immediately change all the charm and appeal of the outdoors into a disgusting cesspool.

I walk out of the campground and take stock of my fellow campers in the light of day. I am reminded that camping is mostly a luxury activity. These people have thousand-dollar tents and new BMWs parked at the site. New hunting and fishing equipment that also looks expensive. Yes, I think, camping is something you do comfortably in your off-time when you have money, not for some bizarre attempt at content creation because you have nothing going on. Total-doom-brain.

I make it back to Gunston Road and my brain is feeling better but my body is not. I realize I have to find a bathroom. I recall that there was a porta-potty near a hiking trailhead maybe a mile further up the road. I get there just in time and it’s honestly the nicest porta-potty ever. Completely clean and fully stocked with normal toilet paper. If it had been any worse I might’ve given up on the trip right then. God bless low population density.

I exit the porta-potty and see a man has pulled into the big empty trail-head parking lot and parked directly next to the stall. He has his window down and is reading the paper while smoking a cigarette. He is the spitting image of JK Simmons’ character from Whiplash: shiny bald head, overly tight black t-shirt and an intense expression. I look at him curiously but he pays me no mind.

Fortuitously, the bathroom break allows me to access some hiking trails that will allow me to cut further down the Richmond Highway without going back to Lorton. Even though the whole point of the trip is to walk within civilization, I decide that a few morning hours off the road will be beneficial for my flagging spirit. This is mostly true, but the trails I use seem like they haven’t been heavily traveled recently and by the time I emerge back on the highway near Colchester, I am entirely covered in cobwebs and bugs.

I cross the Occoquan River and enter Woodbridge, where there is a Dollar General. It’s about a half mile off my route, in the middle of a connecter highway that joins the 1 and the 95. I get my pictures near the Dollar General and note the particularly odd shopping mall. A sample of stuff in here: Joyeria Teresa, Celebrations de Todo, Pak Bazaar, Xela Kabob and my two personal favorites Happy Coin Laundry and Hunan D Lite.

I walk back down towards the Richmond Highway, and along the street, there are a bunch of men just sitting on the sidewalks. I can’t tell if this is a sort of Home Depot parking lot situation, where they are prospective workers hanging out until trucks come by to pick them up or if they’re just addicts who rise and pace until the dealers are available. It’s maybe 8:30 now.

I cover a few more miles on the Richmond Highway and it’s hard to describe this stretch as anything other than grim. Some of the worst-looking highway motels I’ve ever seen. So foreboding that if it was later in the day, I’d stop at them just for the adventure. Vape/Kratom shops are everywhere. If I wanted to abandon my Dollar General premise entirely, I would switch to tracking these except you’d just walk forever. They are infinite. How many people are buying Kratom?

My stomach is acting up again and I try a McDonald’s to peep the bathroom situation. I know Chris Arnade has written a lot about how in forgotten America, McDonald’s is a sort of informal town hall. This is not the case along the Richmond Highway. In this McDonald’s you order through an electronic kiosk and you can’t get one of the workers to engage with you if you try. The indoor experience is now basically identical to drive-through. This depresses me generally but is ideal for a traveler in need of a private shit.

I sit and have a coffee but my cloudy mind will not pipe down so I get back on the road. One good thing about this stretch, roughly between Woodbridge and Dumfries, is that the whole area is an active strip mall so there are sidewalks the whole way. The danger of walking on the shoulder is dispelled from my mind for this morning.

I arrive at Dumfries and the safety level degrades. I got a 50-dollar reservation at a Motel 6 a little bit up the highway. I assume wrongly that this path too will have cover. There is a sidewalk for about half the distance and then it ends suddenly and I find myself totally exposed in the middle of a junction for trucks. This was the most terrifying twenty minutes of the trip so far. I make it to the narrow concrete median amid four lanes of truck traffic and wait for a calm moment when I can run across. Cars honk at me while I’m waiting presumably attempting to communicate “What the fuck are you doing man?” I don’t have a good answer.

Before I get to the hotel, I duck into a Mobile station to get a Gatorade and am accosted by an Indian cashier lady who needs me to leave my bag outside. She had stepped away from an ongoing argument with two burnouts to yell at me. She’s telling these guys, clearly addicts one white and one black, that her son has already banned them from the store. They’re mumbling that she’s a bitch and generally making the types of movements that erratic people do when they’re deciding exactly how anti-social they’re willing to get this afternoon. Luckily they leave and I am able to demonstrate that I am a paying customer, though I receive no warmth from the matron when this is clarified.

I get to the Motel 6 and it’s immediately obvious why it was so cheap. Burn holes in the bedding, bugs in the bathroom and people you absolutely cannot make eye contact with sitting in chairs outside their rooms, smoking sullenly.

In this little complex, with the Mobile and a few hotels for truckers, there is also a Cracker Barrel and a Waffle House. I am torn but decide on Waffle House as it’s cheaper. The woman waiting on me seems trans and as soon as she takes my order she walks outside. I notice the two black guys manning the grill gender her differently. A tall guy with an African accent says “he went to smoke” and a black American replies “She always doin’ that.” They seem to get along though.

My waitress comes back, and realizing my order wasn’t filled apologizes profusely. It’s no bother. I’m just happy to be done with this day. Happy to be alive. For under fifteen dollars, I eat enough calories to erase 15 miles of pack-walking and then some. The motley kitchen staff are anxious for the end of their shift and start throwing waffle batter at each other. What a country.

Miles: 15

Plod faith and fun meter: 0/10 total catastrophe

DGs visited: 1 (lovely)