Days 19, 20 and 21: Almost done with Pa.

I've hiked 36.1 miles over the past two days to arrive in Delaware Water Gap, Pa., the final trail town in Pennsylvania. All that lies between me and New Jersey is a river.

The Presbyterian Church of the Mountain Hostel was hikerville, USA last night. The bunks in the church basement [the hostel part] were full. The couches in the next room were occupied. The 8-person shelter outside was filled, and the tent area was blanketed in tents.

The thru hiker bubble is coming through a town near you!

Right now I'm on a laundry/resupply/internets run in Stroudsburg. My time on this computer is almost up, so let me end with a funny scene.

We're sitting around the hostel. Z [a Romanian] and McBride are playing backgammon. A couple of us are on the couches and chairs. Kogito [he's in this entry] comes in straight from the bar and says he's starving. For whatever reason, there's a nice little jar of dog biscuits on the coffee table, and I suggest he try them. So he does! He houses a bunch of them, and says there's two kinds of dog biscuits in the jar - Milk Bone and Old Roys.

"You gotta go for the Old Roys," he said.

Then he put hot sauce on a brick of raw Ramen noodles and chomps down.

Classic. See you in Jersey!

I [heart] Palmerton

Palmerton, you rocked my world.

You found new things to do at the community playground at 3 a.m.

You juggled in the street. It was a delight zeroing away the afternoon with you.

When will I see "Pineapple Express" again? Will it be the same?

I'll be thinking of you.

[besos, a.s.:)]

Day 17: Palmerton, Pa.

The 17.7 mile hike into Palmerton took me through a God-made garden on top of a 1,500 foot ridge. The trees grew in groves above soft grass and ferns, and an acre of wild blueberries lined both sides of the trail. The last 4 miles or so were one of the few times in Pennsylvania where the sun meets the trail.




Getting from the trail to town involved hiking along a railroad and then thumbing for a ride at the exit from Pa. 248 into Palmerton. I was in a rush because the library was about to close. Finally, a blue pickup truck stopped virtually in the middle of the road and the back door came down to reveal three hikers - Tin Man, Gaspard [the Canadians, from New Brunswick] and Chance, a thru hiker from Virginia I met at Port Clinton] and their packs all crammed into the enclosed truck bed. I jammed myself in, and a few minutes later we were all signing in at the Palmerton Burough Hall.

It's called the Jailhouse Hostel because the hall was once the police headquarters. The town opens the entire basement of the building to let thru hikers stay for free in bunks, and there is a shower upstairs. It's quite awesome, actually.



[the house rules and some bunks, Jailhouse Hostel]

I resupplied down the street at Country Harvest supermarket with Chance. He brought back a whole rotisserie chicken and dug in at the common table. The smell lingered for hours.

A boatload of hikers arrived and then a rising high school senior came down and group interviewed us for a senior project, asking eight of us, all seated around the table like we were Arcade Fire, why we were on the trail, what we missed and how we got our names, etc. It was far out.

That was just the beginning.

At the One Ten Tavern, a waitress seated all of us at a table in a room near the kitchen and gave us menus. We already had beers from when we were waiting for the table. A portly man in a mustache at another table abrubtly asked a waitress to box his and his wife's food. A waitress soon came to our table, ans she could not have seemed sorrier as she told us we had to leave. People, and not just the box guy, had complained about our collective smell.

Most of us, including myself, were shower fresh and in fairly clean clothes. It would have been a stretch to identify me as a thru hiker had I not been in the group.

It happened again at the Palmerton Hotel. As we walked out this time, I stopped. Was I really going to go without dinner and a cold beverage just because one or two of the other hikers - and they were mostly much younger guys - didn't bother to take advantage of the shower at the hostel? Then Chance stopped, turned back, and said, "It was the guy in the dreds."

We went back in and took seats at the bar.

"We got rid of the stinky guy," Chance told the bartender, who was now glad to have us.

It was luau night, and we got lei'd, and stayed dinner to close.

Fast forward, days 14-16

While some people hiked out of Port Clinton, including Leon and his dog, Halifax, and Col. Mustard, a bunch of people stayed for a 0.



[Halifax, Leon and Col. Mustard leaving Port Clinton, Pa. June 23.]

I split a room at the Hamburg Microtel with Mr. Buffalo Man and Goof after the three of us and Hulk resupplied at a grocery store.

After a shower, I walked across a busy highway to get to Cabela's, a 250,000-square foot outdoors store, because I had a list of must-get equipment. There was supposed to be a free shuttle service, but the man on the other end of the phone at Cabela's said something mysterious about the van being out on a guns purchasing run.

When I got there, though, parked at the entrance was a big green van with "Cabela's" written on the side. Hmm...

The store is Ikea-big, but with 10,000 guns and fishing poles instead of lamps and frying pans. The store had stuffed animals arranged in tableaus of predators vs. prey, a wolf pack vs. a herd of water buffalo, for example, in addition to a bustling restaurant and a "shooting gallery." The guns section alone was about the size of the entire REI Rockville outfitter. In short, it was redneck paradise.

The camping section, however, had things like food dehydraters and 8-person tents, things useless to backpackers. I did buy a silk sleeping bag liner and an 8 L bear bag.

At the door I asked the greeter - probably the same guy I talked to earlier - for the shuttle and got the runaround. He pointed to a phone and suggested I call "the management," and a few minutes later the guy was driving me back to my hotel.

The hotel was deserted. All the other hikers there had meanwhile gone to get food and then on to Cabela's [no shuttle], so I got some food, settled in for a South Park marathon and savored the A/C. Later I had a couple PBRs with Mr. Buffalo Man at the bar.

It was good to have a chill day after a punishing hike. It was good to do laundry, get a shave [I'm working on a mustache] and catch some news [SC Gov. Sanford is on the AT? Wait, he's not? Argentina, huh?] For $25 per person, a hotel night was def worthwhile.

The next day I spent a ton of time at Ye Olde Backpacker in Port Clinton. I got a Deuter hydration bladder for my backpack, so I no longer have to stop cold every time I want water, and I ordered a badass tent to be sent to me in Delaware Water Gap.

I also found that Port Clinton has no internets. None. I almost hitchiked back to Hamburg with some other hikers, but instead gave up and went to the Port Clinton Hotel where I ate a massive meal and caught USA vs. Spain on the tele.



[Hawk Mtn. chicken sandwich and small fries w/ gravy. I couldn't finish either :(]

I hiked out of town in the late afternoon and made it a whole 6.1 miles to the Windsor Furnace shelter. The next day was 16.5 miles to the Allentown Hiking Club shelter, and I remember nothing, other than that I almost stepped on whatever venomous serpent this was:

Day 14: The 0 day

In the morning light, I looked around in the pavilion, which Port Clinton keeps for hikers, and saw just about everybody I'd met in my first two weeks on the trail. A gang of us walked .2 miles up the road to the 3C's Family Restaurant for a real breakfast. At the table were me, Squeegie, the twins, Mr. Buffalo Man, Hulk, Leon, Prairie Dog, Angry Beaver, Col. Mustard and Goof. There were games of hangman going on and a festival of "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" quotes, then Col. Mustard did an impersonation of Matthew McConaughey in "Reign of Fire."

After that it was back to the pavilion for leg wrestling.



From left: Half Moon, Sunbeam, Angry Beaver and Squeegie watch Col. Mustard [black shorts] and Prairie Dog [yellow] leg wrestle.

Day 13: The longest day ever

Night 12 ended with thru-hiker storytelling night at the 501, with Mississippi, Goof and Mr. Buffalo Man on one side of the fire and the Eagle Scouts and their masters on the other. I listened from the picnic table for a while, and it made me nostalgic for people I never met on the 1,000 miles I haven't yet hiked.

I gunned hard for Port Clinton, the third of Pennsylvania's four trail towns. Not long after I started I got sidetracked by a blue blaze trail that went straight down like 500 feet in elevation, called the Shower Steps. I hadn't had my coffee, so I didn't have the sense to turn around and I kept convincing myself that the trail would turn into the Trail.

It never did. I got to a highway and almost called for a shuttle. But I turned around and clambered straight back up these things:



My 23.7 mile hike took me over miles of aggravating little rocks. When it got dark, I put on my headlamp and sang Beck's "Satan Gave Me A Taco" over and over again to make noise, just in case bears were foraging in the friscallating dusklight.

At about 10 p.m., after 14 hours of hiking, I staggered into town and walked down Penn Street. I bought a Sprite and a Powerade from a soda machine and went to the Port Clinton pavilion, where I found a room full of people horizontal on the floor, on little platforms, and clothes and food bags hanging from the rafters.

"Is that Ink?" Hulk, a section hiker from Florida, said.

"About time, Ink," Goof said.

It was good to be home.

Trail name! I am "Ink."

T-Suds gave me my trail name, "Ink," because I a] write a bunch on the trail b] have been a journalist and c] want to go back to school for writing.

It is jarring to hear yourself called by a different for the first few days, but it slowly grows on you until you become that person.

Trail names make me think of Viet Nam movies [Forest Gump: "Cleveland, he was from Detroit;" Rescue Dawn: "We call him Walkie-Talkie. He never speaks; never never"] and X-Men.

Day 12: The 501

Just as about every entry in every trail register leading up to Pine Grove Furnace is all about the half gallon challenge and ice cream, a ton of entries before the 501 shelter sing the glories of pizza.

That's because the 501 is one of the very few shelters where you can order pizza and they'll deliver it to the shelter.

However, I started noticing things were amiss when I arrived there, after a 17.4 mile hike, and found that I was only the third person signing the register. There was a phone number for the pizza place on the page. Mississippi, who arrived earlier, had written it there. There was a sign on the wall about how hikers can no longer order pizza to the shelter.

Rubbish.



T-Suds, Mississippi and Goof, the 501. A pizza for each hiker.

A small group of Eagle scouts and their two scoutmasters arrived, as did Mr. Buffalo Man.

We were sitting there talking and eating when a man who identified himself as the shelter's caretaker strode into camp wearing camo pants. He launched into a spiel about how the National Park Service forbids him from selling items to hikers, and that somehow had something to do with hikers not being able to have pizza delivered directly to the shelter or dispose of the boxes afterwards. He told us we would have to pack out the trash, and that he had removed trash bins because people had left boxes out.

He also said he'd been removing pages from the trail register that have numbers for the pizza places on them. When Mississippi asked if he could see previous entries in case friends had left messages for him, the caretaker said, all insouciance, "I'm not going to give it to ya."

I still can't tell if he was pissed at some truly bad seeds that came before us or if he was itching for a fight with Uncle Sam over his vending rights. Regardless, I've heard that the pizza fest continues to this day. I burned up my pizza box at the next campsite on the trail the next morning.

Days 10 and 11

I ended up not zeroing at the Doyle in Duncannon. Instead I hiked 11.3 miles to the Peters Mountain shelter, which is a hotel of a shelter that has two floors and can accommodate 20 people. It just so happened that about that many people were there: A group of about 13 boys from a church adventure group took over the second floor and muddled around the fire place and steps, and a party of five med students from Hershey, on a brief section hike, caroused until 2 a.m. to celebrate one of them's taking a big test. And there were about five hikers.

For dinner I had Ramen and a view of a wet forest.

I slept between two hikers who snored. One of them, Underground, snored like 20 cannons going off every few seconds. Sometimes there would be silence, but I heard no breathing. Then the cannons resumed.

I've never looked at my watch at night so many times in my life. The med students woke me up at 6 a.m. by chattering away as if they were in their own living room before they moved on. T-Suds - a girl who graduated from Fordham in 2005 and has worked for AmeriCorps since - left early, as did the Canadians [Gaspard and Tin Man] and Underground.

I left at about 8 a.m. and hiked along a rainy ridge for 17.8 miles, stomping through puddles of water up to my ankles. By the time I reached Rausch Gap shelter, at 3 p.m., I had passed everyone but T-Suds.

The med students joined us again, but they were more chill this time. They even gave us Oreos.

Update: June 27

Ugh. It's Saturday morning at the public library, and I'm feeling McNultyesque. I'll just say that I got Palmerized last night and leave it at that.

Read above for my recent history...

Status update for June 26

I am in Palmerton, Pa., roughly 930 miles from Katahdin and about 220 miles from my starting point, Harper's Ferry.

The city of Palmerton lets hikers stay for free in the basement of the municipal building. I'm in there with a few other hikers, most of us having arrived [hitchhiking in the back of a pickup truck] just 20 minutes ago.

[library's closing]

Day 9: Duncannon

Duncannon means the Doyle Hotel [see my previous post here].

Here, in the dim barroom with Samwise, Goof, Z, Mr. Buffalo Man and God knows who else, I spent the day feeling a terrible inertia. It felt weird not hiking, not hustling. The beer and bullshitting helped relieve the ennui.

From left: Leafy, Mr. Buffalo Man, me, McBride, Goof.

The trail shows its flinty side

The hike from Darlington shelter to Duncannon starts easy and then becomes a soup of sharp rocks. At one point, it turns into vertical loose dirt, and I fell on my face cursing, hands clutching trekking poles shot out to the sides of me.

Then the trail gets evil.

[you can't see it, but this rock slide starts hundreds of feet up the mountain and continues hundreds of feet down it]

Day 8: The suck

There is no shelter in the 14.3 miles of fields, highways and mountain between Boiling Springs and the Darlington shelter, so it's one of those hikes that you just have to get done.

It didn't help that it rained all day. All day. Or that I started the day out putting my clothes, head to toe, through their second and third tours without laundry.

I reached the shelter after a harrowing, nearly vertical climb, at about 6 or 7 p.m. to find Zipper, Squeegie, Half Moon and Sunbeam there. The wet packs hung on pegs on the back wall; Squeegie strung up a communal clothesline and I hung the two pairs of socks and the two pairs of sock liners I'd drenched on the day. It continued to rain outside and a fog settled.

My dinner was two packets of Thai noodles which I added pepperoni slices and banana peppers to. It was pretty good.

Soon three more hikers, Morning Glory, McBride and Leafy, arrived, and they set up their sleeping pads and sleeping bags on the floor between the two sets of bunks. It was a full house.

Everybody else knew everybody else from previous trail encounters since Georgia. After introducing myself to Leafy and McBride and telling them how the rain was my first since starting my hike the week before, McBride summed it up with, "Welcome to the suck."

Day 7: Boiling Springs

My biggest day so far, Pine Grove Furnace State Park to Boiling Springs, Pa., was 19.4 miles through some of the easiest terrain on the AT.















[If you look very closely, you'll see a tiny blue speck in the center of the picture. That's Samwise, a vegan from NY, hiking the trail about a mile outside of Boiling Springs.]

It was also a day where I had no need at all for any of the food in my pack. I did breakfast [ham, egg and cheese sandwich and coffee] at the Pine Grove Furnace store, lunch [2 birch beer sodas, ice cream bar, hunk of sharp chedder cheese] at a grocery/deli .2 miles off the trail later and dinner [grilled trout sandwich and onion rings] at the Boiling Springs Tavern.

I camped out in the yard of "Lawyer Mark," a man in the upscale but tiny town of 2,500 who, along with his wife, the regional Appalachian Trail Conservancy office said lets thru hikers use his yard for free. I camped in my tarp along with a yard full of the same peeps I camped with the night before: Samwise, Squeegie, Sunbeam and Half Moon [two engaged MU alumni from Ohio], the Twins and their two friends and Mississippi, plus Early Bear and Underground. The twins and their friends actually slept in a tiny playhouse in the yard, which was really a glorified shed.

We were sitting around in the yard when a camera flash emitted from a window in the house next door. Eventually an elderly woman revealed herself on a second floor balcony and photographed us in the open and asked our plans etc. After drinks and dinner at the tavern, Mississippi looked at his watch, declared hiker's midnight, and it was time to turn in.

Day 6: The half gallon challenge!

It's a thru hiker tradition to eat a half gallon of ice cream at Pine Grove Furnace State Park in southern Pa. to commemorate reaching the halfway point of the AT.

Originally, I was going to do the half-half gallon challenge, and some people suggested I do my half gallon challenge at the top of Mount Katahdin, but I went for the whole thing.

I raced Trigger, an MIT student from Oklahoma who is thru hiking at a brisk pace.















I lost the race. He had a weak plastic spoon while I used my camp spork, so he started slow. But he ended up finishing in less than 15 minutes while I took nearly an hour. My ice cream choice - limited edition fried ice cream flavor - worked against me [it was like 25 percent sugary goo]. At least I didn't throw up, which I heard someone else did earlier that day.

I followed up the ice cream glut with a cheeseburger [hey, it was a big day] and a swim in the lake plus a hot shower.

I caught up and camped with a huge group of hikers that were in the ATC building in Harper's Ferry when I started my hike and camping with them. I used my tarp and used a tree root+dirty laundry sack as a pillow and actually slept better than I had in days.

Day 5: The best shelter ever

Walking through the woods in southern Pennsylvania made me feel like I was walking in Middle Earth. The trail is just a dirt path several feet wide through a forest the ends of which can't be seen in any direction, for miles upon miles. It's great. The forest changes periodically. One mile you'll be walking through a huge bed of ferns and very old trees; the next you will have a very young forest.

After a breakfast of trail magic near Antietam shelter, in Old Forge Park, I hiked 10.8 miles to Caledonia State Park. I grabbed a milk shake at the snack shack by the pool and walked around, considering camping for the night. When I got back to the snack shack, Pokie, Snooze and Das Boot - the three Baltimore-area natives making up the group MD-3 - and one of their friends, temporarily named Michael Bolton, were hanging there. I ate two hot dogs and drank a huge Pepsi, and hiked up to Quarry Gap shelter.

The approach to the shelter was a steep climb through a tunnel made of rhododendrons. The shelter itself was immaculate - two three sided structures flanking a middle section where a picnic table sat on a porch. It had a sunroof, a checkers board, magazines, hanging flower pots, a bench, a bear box [bearproof metal box in which to put food overnight] and even a babbling brook.

The place filled up. In addition to myself and the MD-3+1, Zipper - a middle school science teacher from NJ - was already there and two more hikers named Trigger and Solo stayed in.

Trigger told me a bit about what it was like in Georgia in March, when hundreds of hikers, some better prepared than others, would overcrowd shelters by a factor of five. This year has been an especially rainy season for the AT. Most days on the first leg consisted of making dashes through the rain to get to the next shelter.

I also found out that I'm one of the few hikers who doesn't have an iPod or radio, and that my 20 degree sleeping bag is overkill - Trigger had a bag liner and lik a 45 degree bag.

Trail terms

thru hiker: Someone doing all 2,000+ miles of the AT at once. Northbounders go GA to ME; southbounders do the opposite.

flip flopper: Someone who hikes the trail in halves, like me. It can be done in any configuration.

section hiker: Someone just doing part of the trail. These tend to be scouts, former thru hikers revisiting the experience or future hikers preparing for it.

trail magic: Free and unexpected hospitality along the trail. It can be as simple as a picnicker tossing a can of soda a hiker's way or as involved as taking a bunch home for a stay + food.

to zero: To hike 0 miles in a day while on the trail. In other words, to hang out for a day of R & R.

hiker's midnight: 9 p.m.

to slack pack: To give your pack to someone who drives it on ahead while you hike the trail unencumbered [and therefore faster].

to yellow blaze: To get a ride for a portion of the trail.

With shelters,

even if there's no one else in them with you, sometimes you're not alone.

Day 4: Pen Mar Park and Trail Magic

Pen Mar Park, situated at the northern end of Maryland and tucked just inside Washington County, was once the "Coney Island of the Blue Ridge" and attracted half a million people per year taking excursions on the Western Maryland Railroad. Its heyday was 1877 until it was dismantled overnight in 1943 [history here].

Now the park mostly plays hosts to hikers passing through, reunions, picnics and, as it did when I breezed through at 2 p.m. on June 13, wedding receptions.

A stretch limousine pulled up and idled on a drive between between my picnic table and a pavilion overlooking the West from a hill. The driver stood by the engine, smoking a cigarrette in his white gloves.

A red carpet from the back seat of the limo ended at a wooden sign that said, "Appalachian Trail, Main 1,080 miles -> Georgia 920 miles <-".

I hiked 12 miles on the day, crossing the Mason-Dixon Line into Pennsylvania, and arrived at Antietam Shelter in the evening. I started seeing little yellow slips of paper that said something about food for thru hikers, breakfast, lunch and dinner, just up the trail. I was dying of heat, and the babbling creek under the bridge called my name. The shelter turned out to be right off the trail and next to the water, so it was too good to pass up, even though I originally intended to push on. After a fast creek bath, I put on my finest and headed up to a pavilion where Snooze and Pokie, along with about 10 other people I didn't recognize, were having an all-out picnic.

Pootz and M & M, a couple who met on the trail while thru hiking in 2007, were serving up some serious trail magic: Hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, cookies, bananas, strawberries, apples, beer, soda and Gatorade. They had driven 3 hours down from Lockhaven, Pa. to feed us. Everybody went to town and took the party back to the shelter with a sack of Yeunglings.

From left: Pokie, Snooze, Pootz, me, Kogito [New England native hiking incredibly fast].

Day 3: Testing out the tarp system

In the morning I stuck around The Free State [see below] doing laundry and internets and repacking my pack until I was the last hiker there. Janel, the co-owner of the hostel, gave me a ride to the Smithsburg post office, 2.4 miles away, where I mailed home more than 2 pounds of stuff.

After lunch [Reuben, popsicle, soda] at the Smithsburg Market, I picked up some new and very necessary supplies at the pharmacy. I got Zeasorb powder [think Gold Bond] and some zinc oxide ointment to fight my worst enemy in my early hiking days: chafing. Since then, I've been powdering up every morning, and I've noticed I'm not the only guy on the trail who starts his day with a shot of powder down his shorts. The powder is also good for keeping my feet dry, and the ointment also works on poison ivy.

I hiked the AT 5.1 miles to the Devil's Racecourse shelter, which sat derelict at the bottom of a beast of a steep decline. Only one other guy was there, but another two - Thumper and Solar Speck, two section hikers - soon arrived. Those guys and I went back up to the trail. An Asian guy who didn't speak any English asked "Shelter?" and, upon seeing me nod, headed down.

Snooze and Pokie, two girls thru-hiking north, set up a tent, made up a fire and invited everyone over. My nightcap was instant coffee heated over my butane Primus stove. After all that, I slept fitfully in my very exposed tarp tent because of bear paranoia, clutching pocket knife and flashlight in hand.

Update: June 18

I am now at the Doyle Hotel in Duncannon, Pa. where the trail leads directly to this bar and inn that sells 22 oz. Yeungling drafts for $2.75 and rooms to hikers for $25. It's a bit of a dive, truth be told, reminding me of the hotel in the Jim Jarmusch film "Mystery Train."

But anyplace that does internets + laundry + shower, and then throws in + beer, is A-Otay for a hiker.

Read above for the history of my world since last week...

Next up

What is sore today: Chafeable areas, calves, collar bones and hips. It will be a short hike today, which means I won't be crossing the Mason - Dixon Line until tomorrow. But I'm completely recharged.

Off to repack and try to cut out some weight.

-jh

p.s. gear status: I wish I had more soccer shorts and less convertible hiking pants.

Photo dump

Spooky section of the AT in Maryland, June 11.

Me at the top of the Washington Monument, elev. circa 1,535 ft., June 11.

My picture in the 2009 album at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. The blue number means I'm a section hiker. Thru hikers are red, flip floppers are brown. Note the lack of a trail name, a deficiency that plagues me still.

Random musing while walking

Remember in Shawshank Redemption when Tim Robbins gets out of the hole and Morgan Freeman asks him how he stayed sane in the hole that whole time, and Tim Robbins says "Mozart"?

For me it would be Seinfeld. 

Days 2 and 1

Ahhh, internets. How I thirsted for thee.

I'm hanging out in the hostel at the end of the world, aka the The Free State hikers hostel, near Smithsburg, Md. A 2006 thru-hiker who walked to raise money for a free clinic in Hagerstown started it when he got back from Maine, and it is worth every inch of the 18 miles I racewalked here for, and the $32 fee. I've already housed a Coke, two Gatorades and a shower, and tomorrow I will turn my pillow made of dirty laundry into clean clothes.

If you think walking the Appalachian Trail is ruffin' it, it isn't. I've taken three showers so far - the first one was by mountain spring by night, but the next two were the real deal. Public faucets and restrooms abound, at least in the 3/4s of Maryland I've hiked. 

- Day 2 summary:

• Miles hiked: 18, from Rocky Run Shelter to The Free State hostel.
• conditions: jungle-like. No sun, but the fog rolling up over the rocks was beautiful. Anything that gets wet stays wet because of the humidity.
• Points of interest [POIs]: Reno Monument, which is a Civil War battlefield where like 30 guys died; the Washington Monument, which is like a European castle tower but in Maryland, and Annapolis Rocks, which are rocks from which you can see far.
• how's the hike?: the Maryland section is paradise except for a few places. One is the Weverton Cliffs climb, one is the Crampton Gap climb and one is the climb to the Annapolis Rocks. There's also a section between the rocks and here where the trail is nigh impassable because of a proliferation of little boulders. Whenever I see thru hikers from Georgia, they vanish almost instantaneously because they go twice as fast. I'll get there.
• Met: Like five people here who went to sleep half an hour ago; L Train and Andy, who were hanging out at the Dahlgren campsite [the free hot showers place where everybody goes] and a white-haired thru hiker who was similarly perplexed at the soda machines at the Washington Monument and then sped like a phantom down the trail.

- Day 1 summary:

• Miles hiked: 16, from the Appalachian Trail Conservancy in Harper's Ferry to Rocky Run Shelter.
• In Harper's Ferry, 11 a.m. means they turn off whatever machines they use to make breakfast with and turn on the lunch ones. No brunches. Nein! So my "power breakfast" ended up being an expensive fish n' chips. It wasn't bad, though.
  
• I thought about crashing at the Ed Garvey shelter, but it was 3 p.m. and didn't think I could take seven more hours of being a shelter rat.
• I encountered my first southbounder, my first non-working soda machines and my first head cloud of gnats at Gathland State Park.
• I thought about crashing at the Crampton Gap shelter, but it was quiet. Too quiet.
• I shared a shelter at Rocky Run with Early Bear, a northbounder so named because he encountered his first bear three days out from Springer Mountain, Ga. [the starting point]. He had a bag hanging from a branch 30+ feet in the air. I asked him what it was for. "It's my bear bag," he said. There's not much irony on the trail.
• Also met: Samwise and Squeegee, a pseudo Boy Scouts club made up of teens from Cleveland.
• POIs: Harper's Ferry National Historical Park, the Civil War Correspondents Arch.

My bunk awaits...

Launch

It was quite a wait to get this computer. Regrettably, I've sent ahead my camera's USB cable, so there won't be any art for today :(

I'm at the headquarters for the entire trail. So far, 287 thru hikers from Georgia have passed through, as have 31 flip floppers [Ga. to here, then Me. to here]. Just since June 1, 119 thru hikers have passed through. And the guy on duty here says he did trail work in Virginia last week and that there was a buttload of people still down there, so I will have plenty of company when I get to the shelter tonight. Hopefully not too much because it's supposed to rain and I'm tarping it.

I am section hiker No. 83, I'm proud to say. My picture is in the book. Just believe me until I get my camera cable back.

Between here and Port Clinton the trail is mostly flat and good for 2-3 weeks of getting my sea legs. That's good, because I just weighed my pack in at 33 pounds, without water. If you were wondering, I weighed in at 184 pounds, with clothes and stuff in pockets.

Now I will look for a power breakfast in Harper's Ferry. Then I will start walking.

Happy humpday,

-Jeremy H

Countdown

Five minutes until my ride gets here. Feeling hungry.

Next stop: Drop off my car and then to Harper's Ferry, 30 minutes away, where I will visit the Appalachian Trail Conservancy to browse through the photo album of this year's thru hikers, see about applying for a 2,000 miler certificate and get my pack weighed. I'm betting it's 30 pounds. It's pretty heavy.

Wrapping it up...

Welcome to the People's Republic of Walk

This blog borrows a bit from the soccablog I blog for. Instead of blogging for that blog all summer, I will blog here. Sometimes I will blog there. 

Anywho, I'm nervous about making the first post. I've never posted post No. 1 before. 

So I'll first write up the day, and then drop some tidbits.

I've just returned from the downtown Frederick post office, where I lugged in a huge Yeungling box full of town clothes, toiletries and electronics chargers. Apparently you're not allowed to send alcohol boxes through the mail. We got me sorted out, though. 

My bounce box will be waiting for me in Boiling Springs, Pa., which will be 100 miles from my starting point in Harper's Ferry, so I should be getting there in like 10 days. The PO is on the trail. I figure I'll be ready to shave and deodor myself by then and have a bit of a look around. As I wrote to my gramps this morning, it'll be my first thing to look forward to :)

• Response-to-section-hike-idea of the day: "What made you want to do that?" 
• Things to make one think: Whiteblaze.net contributors recommend packing two extra pairs of socks, one extra pair of underwear and like one shirt/pants outfit. I have like five pairs of socks [and four pairs of liners], three shirts, two pants and five underwears. I may be back at a PO sooner than I thought with a package bound for home.
• Fear and Loathing on the AT: Whiteblaze also has an article on how to fend off lightning [!].

Sample: 

AVOID: Avoid water. Avoid all metallic objects. Avoid the high ground. Avoid solitary tall trees. Avoid close contact with others - spread out 15-20 ft. apart. Avoid contact with dissimilar objects (water & land; boat & land; rock & ground; tree & ground). Avoid open spaces.

SEEK:Seek clumps of shrubs or trees of uniform height. Seek ditches, trenches or the low ground. Seek a low, crouching position with feet together with hands on ears to minimize acoujstic shock from thunder.

The article goes on to say this, under a section headlined "Medical treatment and symptoms":

"Treat the apparently dead first."

The trip starts tomorrow. It's blue and white-hot outside right now, but weather.com predicts isolated T-storms tonight. The journey to Maine begins!

-jh