Month: September 2021

I decided to combine these two days, since not much happened really. And I lacked photos. Whoops.

I woke up around 9:30 in the morning, the latest I’ve slept in awhile! It was so nice. I got ready, but I took my time as I didn’t have to be at the airport for a few hours.. and my hotel is literally connected. Haha

I finally checked out at 10:30, walked across the “skybridge” connecting the hotel to the airport, checked my backpack, and headed up the escalator to get some breakfast. I peacefully ate my egg and cheese bagel while uploading pictures to Facebook. At 11pm, I went through security and giggled as people were complaining about the long line.. there was 8 people in front of me. Haha.. clearly these folks don’t frequent the Atlanta airport often.

I made it through with way too much time to spare, read some of a book, boarded my flight, and then managed to take a nap on the plane. I don’t know what it is about planes, but I can’t keep my eyes open on them anymore. After landing, I had to wait forever to get my backpack.. but then I was able to catch a Lyft to Union Station, get some more food (Taco Bell lol), and board my train for Harper’s Ferry.

It was only an hour ride, and between window gazing and reading my book, it passed very quickly. I got off the train and walked to a general store to buy some fuel to cook with, then made the long walk to my hotel. The sky was threatening rain all day, and it was just starting to sprinkle some. The weather for tomorrow is 100% rain with chances of flooding and potential for tornadoes. So, when I got to the hotel, I booked an extra night.. no point in hiking out in flooding rain.

I got into my room and laid around, relaxed, and read. Nothing too exciting to report. When I woke up this morning, it was almost 9:30.. twice in a row! Except, I had nothing to really do today. I ended up getting ready and walking to the 7-Eleven a mile away to get my water bottles for tomorrow, and a lighter. Then I walked into a different general store and had an egg and cheese biscuit.. I waited for the fresh biscuits the girl told me she was baking, not expecting too much. Holy crap.. it was HUGE and the best I’ve had in a long dang time! I loved it!

Mind you, all of my time out of the hotel included walking in complete downpours.. it would slow here and there, but it rained all the same. This just solidified my choice to not have hiked out today. Something tells me that my shoes won’t be very dry tomorrow when I do hike out.. the ground is so saturated!

I got back to my room and promptly took an afternoon nap. When I woke, I ate some pizza and watched Law and Order, SVU. And I read the rest of my book. You know, the important stuff.

Now, I’m just relaxing and realizing I’m going to have some packing in the morning before I head out. I don’t necessarily have a ton of reason to leave out super early, so I’ll just play it by ear.. start slow and take my time.. just see how far I manage to get.

Goodnight, goodnight.

Start: Harper’s Ferry-ATC (AT mi 1025). Stop: Stealth Site by Stream (AT mi 1009.5). Today’s miles: 15.5 miles Total AT mileage: 1183.6 miles. States Completed: Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, West Virginia

I didn’t sleep very well, I think it was the anxiety of the unknown with starting southbound today. I got up at 8 and peeked out the blinds expecting to see overcast or damp weather.. to my surprise the sun was already shining and the hotel parking lot looked completely dry! I took a quick shower, got dressed and went to get the free breakfast the hotel offers. They have a egg and cheese biscuit you pop in the microwave that I’m sure is overly processed, but I liked it enough to eat 2 of them lol..

I took them back to my room to eat in bed with the Law and Order SVU marathon on.. haha I’ve seen every single episode and I still watch them like it’s brand new. I packed up after eating, sad at how heavy my food bag is. I’ve got to learn to quit packing so much food! Before I let myself sit back down on the bed to finish the episode, I quickly threw my pack on and headed out the door.

I checked out and started my short road walk to the trail. I came in on the trail 2 days ago so that way I wouldn’t miss any of the trail today by just walking to the bridge, instead of walking all the way back to the ATC headquarters. The trail went across the bridge that crosses over the Shenandoah River. It’s such a beautiful spot, and you can see the water rushing heavier with more water from yesterday’s rainfall.

Once off the bridge, the trail went down a set of stairs and under the roadway.. then promptly uphill for a while. I purposefully didn’t look at my maps until after lunchtime, because I didn’t want to feel the need to push myself to hike faster. I literally just walked. The hill wasn’t bad, the grade seemed more gentle than the previous mountains I’ve been encountering, so I just took it how it came, one breath in, one foot forward.

I was enjoying the change of scenery, although I will say it was rockier than I expected in places. They were easy enough to dodge completely, step over or around.. there was far more smooth trail than not. It wound around trees and mountains with no names.. I crossed several roads and was shocked how loud all the cars sounded compared to the complete wild feeling of Maine, even when passing a road here and there. These are much busier areas, certainly.

I ate lunch sitting on a swing at David Lesser Memorial Shelter. It was a beautiful shelter, nice enough that I was sad it was only 1pm and didn’t want to just stay put. There was a gentleman there that I briefly spoke to, he mentioned that the water was a trek to get to.. which it was and it sucked to have to do it, but I needed some. He was gone by the time I got back. Besides him, I saw the back of a man hiking southbound ahead of me before I turned to the shelter, and I passed one NOBO hiker.. but that’s absolutely it for the people I’ve seen today.

I spent an hour at the shelter and then finally made myself get going again. As I was getting close to 4:30pm my feet started to really ache. I decided I’d stop at the next steam if the stealth sites looked good, otherwise I’d get water and carry it the half mile uphill to another camping area. When I went down the side trail, the guy from lunch was there setting up!

I ended up camping there, too. We’re not right by each other, but close enough to eat together by the fire pit. He also hung my food with his to make my life easy, lol. So nice! His name is Jerzy, and he summited with FarOut and Sauce! Small world! Today is his first day back on trail since he reached Katahdin. We chatted and talked about the trail and what all we’ve been through while we ate dinner. Sometime around 7 we got our food up in the air and I went to finish unpacking my stuff. I realized then that somewhere down the trail between lunch and now one of my camp shoes fell off! I’m quite sad about this. I hate wearing shoes! I’ll be on the hunt for a new pair if no one magically appears with it any time soon.

Now, I’m laid up in my tent, comfortable as can be. I’m hearing a weird radio like noise, but it’s not coming from Jerzy so I’m not sure what it is. It’s not even 8pm but im ready to sleep. Im trying to wait a little longer because I know I’ll end up having to go pee again.. but my eyelids are already getting droopy.

Oh, I entered into the “Rollercoaster” of Virginia. It’s a stretch of trail that just going up and down and up and down for miles with no views apparently. Because of that, we’ll see how far I get tomorrow. I’m shooting for either 13 miles or 22 miles, depending on how much the up and down takes out of me. Haha there’s a couple places to camp between those, but they don’t look appealing. We’ll see though.. I’m not setting anything in stone. Goodnight, y’all.

Start: Stealth Site by Stream (AT mi 1009.5). Stop: Top of Piney Ridge (AT mi 998.1). Today’s miles: 11.4 miles. Total AT mileage: 1195 miles

When I think back about today, all I can do is laugh. I woke up around 5:30am to Jerzy trying to get our food bags down. He had already told me he was getting up early, so I expected this. What I didn’t expect was the slew of curses coming from him and the branches shaking like crazy. Uh oh. Somehow, the food is stuck.

I get up with my headlamp on to try to help. Somehow the carabiner clipped into the rope a second time and it was stuck-that booger wasn’t going anywhere. We stared and pondered. I’m not too bright first thing in the morning, and as far as I could tell, this food wasn’t coming down anytime soon.. so my plan was to go back to bed-at least until the sun showed up. I told Jerzy we should look in our guthook app and see if there’s anyone nearby that could help-probably a bit later in the morning. He thought my idea was a good one, and decided he’d check the app too.

When I laid back down, I remembered my friend Kevin! He was going to hike some with me yesterday, like he did on my very first day on trail, but ended up having to get some stuff done with work and logistics because of the storm the day before.. if he was close enough to potentially hike yesterday, maybe he’s close enough to help today!

It was just after 6am and I messaged him. With screen shots and satellite he was able to figure out the closest road to me, which luckily was only a little over a half mile down a power line trail and then a split second on the AT down to our stream. We sent pictures and we video chatted so he could discern the best equipment to bring.. ladders, pole extenders, knives. He let me know that he’d have to go into work at 8 and get his employees out on their jobs, then he’d be able to head my way.

OH MY GOODNESS. Talk about being completely lucky.. what are the odds of having a friend that owns a painting company with ladders readily available and lives close-ish to where you accidentally get your food bag stuck.. for the first time since starting this thing!? Of all the places this could have went down, it was the absolute best for getting such quick help! I napped again until 8, then packed all my stuff and walked the power line trail to the road he’d be coming to- a tiny dirt road in a residential neighborhood with no trespassing signs.. haha welp.

Kevin appeared at exactly 9am with Chris for extra hands. I hugged them both and thanked them profusely, and we all got a good laugh at the silliness of my predicament. They carried a 12ft ladder, I carried 2 poles, and we made our way back to camp. Jerzy popped up from his nap when we arrived (I purposefully didn’t wake him when I left, he had said he didn’t sleep well, I was wondering if this was God letting him catch up on some).. and Kevin and Chris had our food down, without cutting Jerzy’s cord within less than 2 minutes, start to finish. Hahaha Good Lord.

We all walked back to their truck, me with the poles and the 3 of them trading out with the ladder toting duties. I think Kevin takes the cake as the ultimate trail angel! I mean, we all know I wouldn’t have starved, but damn I would have been pretty cranky if I had to hike out to a road and get food AND figure out how to get someone to come back and get our bags down.

Jerzy and I walked back, chatting about our gratefulness and how we definitely won’t be making it to our original planned destinations. He was hoping for a 13.8 mile shelter, I was hoping for 22 miles-if I had left at 6:30am I would have potentially made it.. haha. We happily ate our breakfasts, thankful for food and to be able to get our days started. Since I had already packed up everything but my food, I just had to put my bag in and I was ready to go. We said our goodbyes and I hit the trail at 10:30.

So. I only made it 11.4 miles today: BUT I got started late, I took an hour lunch, AND I went up and over 9-10 mountains (depending on how you count one of those, could be separate-could be one lumpy one) and up to the top of the 10-11th one to camp. They don’t call it a rollercoaster for nothing! Jerzy was calling them “PUDs” aka: a bunch of Pointless Ups and Downs.. haha-it’s frustrating to many because they’re aren’t any views. Like the campsite I’m at on top of a mountain: no view. At all. Lol

I however, strangely enough, enjoyed this day! The first uphill didn’t even register as going “up” for some reason. I was hiking along and the next thing I knew there was a ledge with about 10 people standing around. I snapped a pic and kept it moving. Down, up, repeat for hours. There were so many people out, too! I probably saw over 50 day hikers, a couple section hikers, a potential NOBO, and another SOBO flip flopper like me.

It was close to noon when I was coming downhill to a parking lot. A couple caught up to me and started asking about my backpack, when they realized I was thru hiking, I was offered a banana at their car in the lot! How sweet! Their names are SlimShady and CityBoy and they have aspirations of doing the trail, but they come and hike this section often since it’s close to home.

After chatting with them and eating my banana, I headed across a huge highway and right back uphill. There was another ledge type view of the city below, but there were so many people around that once I got a picture I kept going. Sometime close to or just after 1, I stopped at a stream to filter water and eat my lunch. I sat there for an hour, reading on my kindle app as I munched on chips.

At 2, I got back up and started going again. Sadly, I kept getting smacked in the face with spider webs. Clearly no one had been around this section for awhile. I passed the 1000 miles to Springer sign and did a little dance! I like that the trail is basically a count down now.. home will be mile Zero! Man, it feels so close yet so very far away.

As I made my way, I happily passed a few more people.. which only delighted me so much because since they were coming from the opposite direction, they cleared all the spider webs for me going forward! Thank GOD. I hate stuff touching my face, especially when every now and then it’s a spider itself or a bug trapped in the web. Yuck.

I filtered another 2 liters before heading up what ended up being my last climb of the day. I knew by getting the water I’d probably end up staying either way, but I started hitting chunks of trail with more webs again, and honestly it was just too damn annoying to continue. Plus it was already 5pm, and I just didn’t care to go another 2.4 miles to the next shelter, although the comments in the app made it sound very nice. We’ll see if I regret that when I pass it in the morning.

I set up my tent, hung my food line, and then changed my clothes. Not having camp shoes really blows a loose one, I hate putting those trail runners back on even for a second! But I’m making due. I think I’ll get a shuttle to Walmart when I get to Front Royal in the next 2 days. Anyway, I cooked and ate dinner, unpacked my stuff, and went to put my food bag in the air. It’s definitely not as high as yesterday’s.. my arm isn’t that good. The way I see it, it’s far enough away from me that if a bear does get it, he’ll be too busy over there to eat me over here. Haha

It’s almost 8pm, and I’m laid up in my tent listening to the bugs and crickets sing-and what I hope is fireworks in the distance. If it’s a mass murderer, they definitely have some bad aim. It is a little unsettling though, being alone on top of a wooded mountain and hearing booms but not being able to see anything in the sky from the trees blocking. Oh well, let’s hope my earplugs help me and my camo tent disguises me from creepies.. lol

Anyway, I think I’ll read a bit before bed tonight. It’s 26 miles to Front Royal and the town looks pretty cool, so I may try to do more miles tomorrow and have an easy day into town the following day to do laundry and buy new camp shoes and resupply. We’ll see. The sun is rising at 6:45 this days apparently, so I set my alarm for 6.. maybe I’ll actually get up and get a move on.
Goodnight y’all.