Hey Everyone! Hope you're having a great week. Well another week has passed and I just got back from another trip. Boy it really feels good to say that. It feels like I haven't been anywhere until a few weeks ago and now I've been on another trip. In a couple of weeks I'll have another trip to tell you about. So the year is starting to turn out better now that spring has arrived. This week's blog is about a trip that Robert (my photography wingman) and I took to do some fly fishing for trout and some photography and videography.  We planned this trip a month or so ago and went ahead and made our lodging accommodations. Once that is out of the way we could plan our days. The plan was to be on the water very early in the morning ( O' Dark Thirty) and fish to about noon or so get lunch and then photography and videography. Robert was the videographer and he even added a drone to the mix this trip so we spent a lot of time taking video footage and I wandered around taking photo's. Of course there was rain in the forecast . It seems like there always is when we take a road trip. I remember one time took a trip to Indiana for a bike ride and Hurricane Helene followed us all the way there and it rained the whole time we were on the trip until we were about a half hour from the house. Here is the link to a blog I wrote about it. Indiana Road Trip Hurricane Helene. It was 5 days and 7 states of rain. LOL  Anyway back to this trip. 

Our Trip. We had planned to stay in Damascus Va. Commonly called "Trail Town USA" the AT (Appellation Trail) goes right through the main street of town. The week before we arrived they had "Trail Days" which is a week long festival and the towns population goes from less than a thousand to 25000 in a week. By the time we got there the masses had left. This is a quaint little town geared toward tourism as the main income. It has all sorts of cute Air B&B places to stay and little diners, coffee shops. The area is big on
hiking, bike riding and of course fly fishing. The Virginia Creeper trail goes right by the town. This is one of Americas favorite Rails to Trails this is a trail that had been converted from a train track to a foot and bike path. Now during our bike trip that I talked about earlier Hurricane Helene Devastated this area . It flooded the town eroded roads away and washed away bridges. Over 40 bridges (that used to be train trestles) on the Virginia Creeper Trail. I thought that they would never fix the
trail but I was wrong. After they had fixed the roads they started on the trail and bridges there is a lot of construction and are planning on having the trail open by October. So hopefully I have painted a picture of this town. We had reservations for Thursday through Sunday. Robert wanted to get there the night before so he got reservations at a small hotel in Sparta and we were to leave Wednesday afternoon then the next morning drive 45 min and could
be fishing Thursday morning instead of driving. So that's what we did. We left Wednesday after lunch and drove the 4 hours to Sparta where we had a room booked.  Had a great meal at a Super Mexican
Restaurant. The next morning we headed out and arrived in Damascus and headed to our first fishing spot. We got our gear together and headed to the water. We fished it until about noon and we both caught fish. Robert had the first and the largest fish of the day. We went to a burger joint in Damascus for lunch. We then went to a grocery store and got snacks, fruits and stuff for the Air B&B. We got in touch with the owner of the Air B&B and he let us check in early. After we got settled into our place we went and did a photo walk
around Demascus. I took photo's and Robert took video and flew the Drone. We ate at the apartment and the next morning we were up early before the sun came up and headed out to fish. Let me tell you the photography went much better than the fishing did. We fished all morning. Now when you're fly fishing standing in a stream where trout are it's usually a very rocky bottom with baseball sized or larger rocks covering the whole stream bottom. This means you're slip sliding around the whole time trying to keep your balance trying to keep from falling in. You use a lot of muscles that you haven't used before so you get very sore quickly. We tried a couple of locations and by noon I was very sore from slipping and sliding and casting. So I headed to the car while walking down the road I looked at my wader boots and the sole on both of them were coming unglued falling apart. A little later
Robert had showed up and I told him about my shoes and he said that was nothing because the backside of his waders had blown out with a huge hole.

We had a good laugh. We went back to the apartment got cleaned up and went off to Bristol Tennessee to check out downtown.  We went there had some BBQ at a Delta Blues BBQ joint. We then walked the downtown area. It was pretty worn down but that made for some interesting photos. The next day it was photography and Video only no fishing. We started at the Archway into Damascus on the AT and then started doing some country exploring and found some good shots. It was suppose to rain in the afternoon so we tried to shoot in the morning and do editing in the afternoon.  We got some really cool shots of the landscapes old barns and churches. That pretty much rounded off that day doing editing and getting ready for departure in the morning. The next morning we headed out and went to Boone NC for breakfast and then headed home. 

It was a fantastic trip and we had lots of fun. We had some things go wrong My waders leaked and my wading boots were coming apart. Robert had a broken rod tip, scratched a GoPro lens pretty bad, and his waders blew out.  But over all we had fun , we laughed, we fished, took some good photo's and got some good video. Like all of our adventures we enjoyed ourselves . I hope that if you're into photography that you have a chance to get out with your friends and have an adventure. So until next week " Get outside and shoot" and have an adventure. If you would like to  see a video of this trip here is the link Fly Fishing Damascus . 

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link