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.