Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 17, 1990 TAG: 9006190497
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The northbound hiker travels the long crest of Tinker Mountain, a green corridor of solitude accented with vistas of beauty, then rapidly descends toward Daleville. The sounds of forest birds, the thrush, give way to meadow birds, the red-winged blackbird and quail, then to the roar of semis on Interstate 81 and U.S. 220.
Suddenly the skyline is ablaze with neon and the thin and haggard through-hiker has a smorgasbord of eateries awaiting his choice: Burger King, Country Cooking, Country Pride, Hardee's, McDonald's, Pizza, Hut, Shoney's, Western Sizzlin.
It's time to gorge, to forget the dehydrated, freeze-dried food, the grains, the nuts, the rice, the noodles.
You try not to think about the upcoming treat too far in advance, said Dan Yeager, a 57-year old hiker from Kentucky. Yeager, whose trail name is Rambling Dan, was a trim 166 pounds when he strolled into Daleville last week. That was 22-pounds less than the late-March day he left the southern terminus of the trail, on Springer Mountain, Ga., and pointed his walking stick toward Maine.
"I don't think ahead. I just wait until I am about three hours from a town and I start planning my menu. If you start thinking `Two days to a town,' you can't stand the food you have to prepare that night."
This time, he plans his menu around a steak at Western Sizzlin. He makes five trips to the salad bar. Then he goes to the rear parking lot, sits on a postage-stamp size patch of grass, his back against the building, a look of contentment on his sun-browned face. He has 1,400 miles to go.
The entries of hikers in the last trail register before Daleville weave a story of anticipation and craving:
I'm ready for a relaxing night off the trail and loads of food I don't have to cook.
Where's Shoney's?
Heading to the land of AYCE You Can Eat] and a bathtub. I need both desperately.
Food. FOOD! Need I say more?
AYCE.
Shoney's.
Shoney's or Country Cooking tomorrow!
It is time for some saturated, lubricated fast food.
The land of neon.
Charles Purcell is a 68-year old hiker from Florida who goes by the trail name Flamingo Legs.
"If you could see my legs, you would understand," he said.
Those pipe-stem appendages are giving him trouble.
"It is like needles going down my legs."
He started his hike in Georgia on April Fool's Day - "Yes there is a lot of significance to that" - and he was leaving the trail at Daleville last week to get medical attention.
But not before hitting Shoney's breakfast bar. It is an all-you-can-eat arrangement for $3.79, not counting Purcell's senior-citizen discount.
"I go after the eggs, the sausage, the bacon. They have French toast. Pancakes. Then the fruit. Then you go back and start with the eggs, the sausage, the bacon, the pancakes, the fruit. You just keep going. That's the idea. You can have all you can eat. You can spend yourself a couple of hours there just eating."
Two hours is about the average eating time for hikers, said Jody Gordon, manager at Country Cooking, which has an unlimited salad-vegetable-dessert bar. Other customers take about 45 minutes, he said.
Hikers don't just take longer, they eat more, said Gordon. A lot more.
Gordon worked at a Country Cooking in Lexington 4 1/2 years before coming to Daleville.
"I'd seen maybe two or three people who could eat an outrageous amount until I came here. Now I've gotten used to it."
Country Cooking, Shoney's and Western Sizzlin appear to attract most of the long-distance hikers who move through the region, April through June. All three offer an unlimited salad bar. Pizza Hut drew large numbers until it discontinued its all-you-can-eat buffet about four years ago. Trail trade dropped sharply after that, the manager said.
While some hikers - Dan Yeager is one - will feast on a steak, the average hiker coming into Country Cooking, Shoney's and Western Sizzlin buys the salad-vegetable bar only, the managers said.
That selection most likely is based on a combination of bodies craving vitamin A, found in greens and vegetables, and pocketbooks that are losing weight even more rapidly than the hikers who carry them.
At Country Cooking, where the salad-vegetable-dessert bar costs $2.79 at lunch, hikers particularly like the pinto beans, and they frequently finish up on pudding, said Gordon, who once saw dessert dishes left on a table in the form of an imposing pyramid.
"We probably don't make any money on the hikers," he said.
For many trail officials, the Daleville-Troutville interchange is something of an embarrassment, an intrusion on a wilderness experience, where hikers must descend the mountain peaks to walk asphalt with the smell of diesel fuel in their nostrils. Daleville remains one of those spots along the trail's grandiose journey where efforts continue, and federal money is spent, to provide a better buffer for hikers.
While that is important to some, others say it is futile to attempt to disguise the fact you are passing through an urban area.
"It doesn't bother me," Yeager said, while resting behind the Western Sizzlin. "This is part of living; part of America. The fact that you are on a 2,000-mile hike shouldn't be affected whether you go through a town or around a town.
"Some people may be a purist, and want to stay on the trail. That's fine. But I am doing this for enjoyment. If I get close to a town, I enjoy stopping and seeing what the town has to offer and eating in a restaurant. My cooking isn't that great."
by CNB