{"id":454,"date":"2006-05-12T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2006-05-12T13:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/?p=454"},"modified":"2006-05-12T08:00:41","modified_gmt":"2006-05-12T13:00:41","slug":"new-york-times-discovers-damascus-va","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2006\/05\/12\/new-york-times-discovers-damascus-va\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Times discovers Damascus, Va."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/travel2.nytimes.com\/2006\/05\/12\/travel\/escapes\/12trail.html?8dpc\">Pretty soon they&#8217;re gonna be calling it Trail-A-Palooza. <\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>From May 19 to 21, Damascus will stage what has become probably the largest single gathering of hikers anywhere: an annual festival called Trail Days. Last year, despite a steady rain, an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 people showed up for the celebration in a town with an official population of 1,094.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s where I wanna be, sharing a tiny mountain town with 25,000 people.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It starts with a townwide yard sale. After that, there&#8217;s the Trail Day Pageant. Then comes a tarp-raising contest; Appalachian Trail Jeopardy; presentations from the Whittling Club; a homemade gear contest, followed by a useless gear contest. Bands play. Gear manufacturers set up shop. Tents of all shapes, colors and sizes are erected a foot apart in a makeshift campground of 2,000 campers. The weekend culminates with the hiker parade, often consisting of more than a thousand participants marching through the center of town as onlookers soak them with squirt guns.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, that&#8217;s one way to get a shower.  Lord knows they need one.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This year  there will be 150 vendors, 5 musical performances and more than 40 events. The number of visitors camped out in downtown Damascus along the river got so big a few years back that town officials had to tighten the reins and move the bulk of campers a half mile from the center of town.<br \/>\n<P><br \/>\n&#8220;Locals couldn&#8217;t get to the post office,&#8221; said the Trail Days organizer, Bob Hayes, who has lived in Damascus for 32 years. &#8220;Any place they could put a tent they put a tent. Every year, it&#8217;s grown and grown and grown. We&#8217;re almost full.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Just what they need:  publicity in a publication with over a million subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pretty soon they&#8217;re gonna be calling it Trail-A-Palooza. From May 19 to 21, Damascus will stage what has become probably the largest single gathering of hikers anywhere: an annual festival called Trail Days. Last year, despite a steady rain, an&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2006\/05\/12\/new-york-times-discovers-damascus-va\/\">Read the whole thing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}