We had decided that we would get on the Appalachian Trail via a side trail near Damascus, VA, hike southwards towards the Watuaga Dam, and then be picked up by my other aunt that lives in North Carolina. We parked the van, unloaded our stuff, and geared up. Once we had all gotten our packs on, bandanna's tied, and the Suburban locked up, we posed for a few pictures and started off. We noticed two trails, one led up a steep set of rock stairs, and I do mean STEEP, and another led off into the woods going upwards at a gentler pace. We decided the stairs were definitely meant for the trail to the top of the natural bridge and decided to head off on the easier trail. Brad led the way, but quickly large rhododendron plants began interfering with our trail. After a good two minutes of hiking, Brad came upon a rhododendron plant that completely blocked the way. Thinking that it was just there because of a recent storm we urged him to find a way through it. We all began crawling on our stomachs underneath the plant. Brad made it through after about 5 minutes and began to go again. I followed him, Aaron P. behind me, and the rest following him. Once Aaron and I had made it through, Brad declared that the path stopped and was most definitely NOT the trail leading to the Appalachian Trail. We spent another ten minutes clawing our way back to the parking lot. By now we were all, dirty, sweaty, and looked a lot worse off than we really were. To top it all off, we came out of this 50 yard hike to find several other people who had come to see the natural bridge standing in the parking lot. Sheepishly we explained that we were idiots and that they should definitely not go the way we had just taken. Knowing now that the steep stone steps were are only way, we started once again towards the Appalachian trail. To our chagrin, the stone steps didn't stop after 30 of them like we thought. In fact, 60 steps later we were already getting tired and wondering what we had gotten ourselves into. And over the next two and half miles of straight uphill climbing the trail just got steeper and less well maintained. By 12:30 that day we were exhausted! We had finally made it to the Appalachian trail, and therefore decided to reward ourselves by breaking for lunch. We dropped our packs, rung out our sweat soaked shirts (it was sunny and HOT that day), and began to dig into the bagels, peanut butter, and jelly, and the massive amount of Tang that we had brought. Unfortunately, we had to conserve our water since we knew we wouldn't get to a water source until our camp that night. As we sat there eating lunch, a few women thru-hikers came by heading northward on the trail. They paused and chatted for a couple of minutes with us about the way they had just come. They soon went on their way, and we immediately proceeded to debate on which one was the cutest of the three, realizing we most likely wouldn't see any more women until the end of the week. At approximately 1:30 we started off again heading uphill, but at a much gentler slope. We joked and talked to keep our minds off of our already worn down bodies as we marched onwards. We found our campsite at about 5:30 or 6:00 that evening, and immediately hiked the 1/4 of a mile to the fresh spring to refill on water since we had gone without it for the past hour. At around 6:30 another hiker heading southwards stopped at our site (it was a rather large campsite) and decided he would spend the night there as well. Most of us were too tired to talk to him, except for Matt and Justin I think. Matt relayed to us later that night that he went by the name Spyder and had been hiking for about 6 weeks (I think) now, on his way to Georgia. We slept in late the next morning, and by the time most of us were just crawling out of bed, Spyder was getting ready to head on down the trail. Thus began Day 2.