Friday, July 28th, 2000
8:45am 72 degrees, breezy and sunny. We wake up after a night of tossing and turning due to sore muscles and collect our gear and prepare for our walk into Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. It is 11.8 miles away. We have been told that the hardest part of the walk will be climbing this damn hill to get us back on the trail!
What a beautiful place this is!
11:50am. Still 72 degrees. We started walking at 10:20am up the switchbacks that we grew so accustomed to in Georgia. Learned a great quote from Bob and it is in reference to the common question of: Do you have fun walking the trail? Well, I think this is the best answer I have heard yet and I will use it in the future…
“It’s not fun but it IS fantastic.”
-Bob at the Blackburn Trail Center
Passed a couple of groups of hikers. Very beautiful trail-even has grass in some spots.
11:45am. Arrived at trail to David Lesser Memorial Shelter which puts us at 3.2 miles in 1 hour and 30 minutes. 8.6 miles to go till we reach Harpers Ferry - I estimate that we will arrive around 4pm.
11:55am. Break is over. Walking on.
The hiking continued on and we passed over fairly easy terrain-or as easy as you could expect with a pack on and pouring sweat. Still a pleasant day. We continue on and cross a 2 lane road-VA 9 I believe and again, we disappear into the woods along a very old fence line that continues straight for hundreds of yards. Once past the fence we find a place to stop for lunch. Trisquits, beef jerky, and pistachios…oh yeah, don’t forget to “taste the rainbow”! Skittles too!
1:35pm Continue on. We pass “Trail Boss” who is doing some maintenance on the trail-cutting it back and widening the trail out. Lot’s of work for him! Continue along a rocky path and come to a sharp left turn. This is the West Virginia border and we will be in West Virginia for a few miles. All day and even yesterday, the Trail has been running along the Virginia/West Virginia border. We begin a long, fairly steep descent to the Shenandoah River and run across a couple of day hikers. “Gare the Bear:” Vietnam vet who finally, after 30 years of therapy, is able to go into the woods without seeing the enemy! Wow! He is planning on a thru hike next year.
Along the way we came up with trail names for everyone (everyone but me):
Donny-“Wounded Knee”-his knee gave him trouble during our walk in Georgia!
Skye-”Pack Mule”-he could and would carry anything and everything!
Mike-”The Baker”-after all, he did bring the mixing bowls!
Todd-”Livin’ Life”-cause that’s what he is doing out here. I remember him telling me something to the effect of: “ya know, after 26 years of life, this is the first time I have done anything like this…the first time I have truly lived!”
Me-?? Maybe “Bookkeeper” cause of all the map and trail books that I constantly check to calculate our distances, or “Scout”-Todd says he likes that name cause I seem to have what we need and am always prepared…something like that.
Anyhow, I began signing some of the logs in Georgia as the Army 5. I have continued that spirit on this trip and have been signing as- The Army 5 minus 3. Appropriate I believe.
Our descent continues to where we can see the Shenandoah River (we are told the Potomac is heavily polluted with PCP’s so maybe this one is too since they connect?) and we come to our first bridge which crosses it and heads into Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. We had to duck and jive some traffic and even had trouble finding where the trail went once it came to the bridge. After asking a few people (who were totally clueless to anything except fishing) we finally spotted a white blaze on one of the guard rail supports mid way across the bridge. The bridge itself was under some pretty heavy construction. They are building another 2 lanes so they can increase the traffic flow. The traffic is very busy as is.
We step onto the bridge and stay close to the guardrail so we don’t get hit by any cars! It is a long way down to the river and it is a beautiful site. There are rocks sticking up throughout the river and it is shallow enough to see the bottom. The water is brown which comes from tannic acid. Just a side note: tannic acid can be extracted from acorns and when prepared properly can be used as an antiseptic.
Everyone in their car seems to stare at us as they drive by. Maybe we are just something interesting to look at after seeing nothing but bumper to bumper traffic for a while? Or maybe they think we are bums? I think that a lot of people think of hikers, in general, as bums. I believe that most people just do not consider the fact that some people walk-on purpose.
So, we finally cross the length of the bridge, past all the gaukers and we spot a double blaze on a boulder ahead. The double blaze indicates a turn in the trail. This turn takes us up, up, UP! We turn and head back into the woods towards Cliff Trail. It was a short, but nearly vertical, rocky climb. I notice a trail breaking back to the left rear and look up to see where it goes–I freeze. Standing right in front of me, only 10 feet away are 2 deer who are staring back at me, also frozen. I try to signal Todd to stop and come look, but they get tired of looking at me and dart off into the woods.
We walk along the trail for a while and finally spot a sign which points to the Headquarters of the Appalachian Trail Conference (ATC). Yeah! We are pretty happy to see that sign. It has been a pretty easy day, but we have been pushing along at a little over 3 miles per hour and it is taking it’s toll. We climb another near vertical trail and exit the woods for some sort of campus grounds. The trail markers led across a green lawn and up a small set of stairs…that is where we got confused as to where to go. I noticed a large boulder which was in front of one of the buildings. On the boulder I could see a bronze plaque and instantly I thought that it was a duplicate of what we saw on Springer Mountain at the beginning of the trail. Wrong! As I approached it, I excitedly asked a group of people if I had made it? “Well, where do you think you are?” was there reply. Well isn’t that great…you would figure that anyone working near the ATC would know that people with packs on their backs were obviously hiking…and since they are hiking, it would only make sense that they were hiking the Appalachian Trail which is only 50 yards away…and since they are hiking the Appalachian Trail it would only make since that, after 1,000 miles they come see the ATC…and since they are here for the ATC it would also make sense to POINT IT OUT! But nooooo…they had absolutely no idea where the ATC was! They sent us off in the wrong direction and for some, unknown, reason we decided to go in the opposite direction. Well, now we are totally confused. We know that we are near the ATC but no one seems to know where and there are no markings or signs. How weird. To hikers, the ATC marks the theoretical “half-way” point. The physical “half-way” point is in Pennsylvania. For North-bound hikers, the ATC, comes after approximately 1,000 miles. Anyhow, I finally collapse and lay down under the shade of a tall tree on the lawn of a church and wait.
Finally, a woman approached and Todd asked her where the ATC was. She pointed it out to us and we found it!
4:05pm. We reach the ATC! We drop our packs and go inside the building. They people welcome us and give us a short tour of the Center. They have a great terrain-relief model of the Trail. We confirmed that what we have been walking appears to be some of the easiest terrain on the trail…so be it.
The caretakers take a Polaroid of Todd and I outside and post it in the book which contains all Thru-hikers and Section hikers of this year. They had books dating back 20 years or more. We leafed through the pages and found that Sonny and Rascal had made it here on the 29th of June and someone else we met - Jersey Devil and his German Shepard made it here on the 3rd of July (I remember that he had a pack on his dog, and when we asked him about it, he said, “No one gets a free ride!” Cool to see familiar faces…almost like seeing living legends.
We willed up on water and debated on what to do next - 3 miles to a primitive campground or 2+ miles to a hotel. Well, it looked like rain, so we opted for the hotel. It was another 2.5 miles away, so at 5pm we hiked on. We passed through historic Harpers Ferry and learned some history: quickly. We could hear thunder in the distance and could see the clouds building and forming thunderheads. We didn’t want to get rained on. Ha!
We crossed a footbridge, that was more like a huge iron bridge built adjacent to a railroad trestle, which crossed the Potomac. The train track continued on into a dark tunnel with a Gothic design that was built in the 1920’s. Our path descended an iron spiral staircase. From there, we walked with the Potomac river on our right and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal on our left. We walked along the former tow path as the canal was no longer in use and the only water it had was stagnated and looking pretty nasty. Todd and I debated whether or not we would search the bottom of that nasty canal if there were a million dollars hidden in it; it wasn’t a debate. Todd would do it in a heartbeat. I thought that it would be a good idea when you started off but once you got into the mucky, stinky, bug-infested water, the million dollars wouldn’t be on your mind.
Within minutes we felt a few drops of water…could have been sweat or drips from our water…but no! It darkened up and the heavens opened up by dropping what seemed like buckets of water on us. The drops were cold and big and we quickly became soaked - everything, totally soaked. The rain continued and we still had more than a mile to walk. So we did. No choice there, so why worry about it–but it sure did suck! We finally came to a path which crossed the Canal and the Rail line and got us to the semi-flooded street. Now we walked up hill, stomping through the rivers that were created by the torrent of rain.
We passed a youth hostel and found that we were only half way to the hotel. Finally crested the hill and turned left and could see civilization! I must say that it was a very happy moment when we saw the VACANCY sign! We sloshed into the Office and got a room. Soaked to the bone, out packs must have gained 10 - 20 pounds and we could feel it dragging our packs down more and more with every step.
We slowly drug our packs and our bodies to the room and I jumped into the shower and changed clothes. Todd decided to wait cause his feet were water logged and blistered from his bought with the water.
We went across the street for dinner and shared some fried chicken and had some pie. We were both very tired and eventually headed back to the room.
Tomorrow is going to be rough with wet boots…
I have to say that getting soaked wasn’t all bad - it was refreshing and you had no choice but accept it - however, the bad part would have been setting up a tent in the rain. Bob, the care taker, said he had 38 days of rain when he started the trail - Todd and I agreed that that may have broken us. Gotta learn how to keep the feet dry - they were swamped!
Tomorrow: Burkittsville, Maryland: Home of the movie, “The Blair Witch Project.” About a total of 11 miles for us tomorrow…better do it before it rains!
By the way, there is a heat vent in the bathroom. We turned it up all the way and have hung our clothes in there to dry - hope it works.
“It’s not fun, but it is fantastic!” So true!
Today’s total: 15.3 miles
Trip total: 22.9 miles
* I have more than 100 miles on the Trail now…still less than 5% of it’s entire length!
