Mediocre in the Middle

Sorry to all followers for the long delay! These blogs always take so long to write; it's hard for us to sneak them in:( As you may have seen from Lorri's comment, Jess dislocated his shoulder recently, but it has healed quite well, and we are currently in Maine. But, I don't want to give too much away. Back to Harpers Ferry!

After the Aqua Blaze, we went to Frostburg, MD to visit with The PHLO's family. We spent a week there repairing the boats that we could - one was unsalvegable, but that was because of damage it acquired prior to our use, so we inflicted no permanent damages in the end (although the canoes are quite a bit uglier). Then we went with the Kennedy clan (Phlo's mom's family) to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and spent a lovely week soaking up the sun on the beach:) Although we were a little sad that we had to spend 2 full weeks away from the trail, knowing how far behind that would put us, by the end of the vacation we were very happy to have had the opportunity - my knees finally stopped hurting, and we were back in full-fledged hiking spirit!

Phlo's parents dropped us off in Harpers Ferry at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy Headquarters. We made the mistake of telling the lady in charge just how much we had yellow-blazed (we just did the math, and were shocked to discover that we had skipped 422 miles out of ~1,000 of trail!), and she marked us down as section hikers and not thru-hikers:( As we walked back onto the trail, NOBO Hobos again, the Phlo came to feel very... dissapointed. He began talking about hitch-hiking home, and eventually even threw off his pack in frustration. "If this isn't a thru-hike, what's the point of hiking on?" I spent the rest of the night trying to convince him to carry on - "What, did you do this just to get your name on some list?" "We came out here to live stress-free after college, and it looks to me like white-blazers have a lot of stress" and so on. I had already made plans with friends from Long Island to hike a small section with them, and I sure wasn't going to give up before I got to hike to and in New York New York! I think this fact was what finally convinced him to soldier on.

The AT we hiked onto was a different trail than we remembered. We were, quite possibly, the last northbound thru-hikers - we had already been behind when we finished the Aqua Blaze, and the two weeks with the Phlo's family sure didn't help. There were no thru-hikers, only section hikers, which to a thru-hiker means lots of identical boring conversations - "yes, we hiked here from Georgia" "we carry about 40 pounds when full on food" "yes, we're going to Maine" "I'm from Long Island, he's from MD" and so on. And they all seemed dissapointed that we weren't doing 20 miles a day and that we had skipped sections - I think section hikers like to fantasize that they couldn't possibly hike the whole trail, and seeing us makes them realize that it is possible, so the only reason they won't is because they don't want to abandon their worldly comforts for so long. We started avoiding shelters, and were generally alone. Which was just dandy for us - it was the first time on this whole hike that it felt like just the two of us were doing this journey together, the way we had expected.

The trail in MD was beautiful and short. It was always two people wide, so we could actually walk next to each other and hear each other when one spoke, and it was nice and flat, with just enough hills to keep it interesting. We were able to meet up with Phlo's cousin, Angela, and his/our friend Jen, who live near the trail, though they didn't do any hiking with us. Then we hiked into PA. We knew by now that we were so far behind that we'd either have to hike 20 or more miles per day everyday for the next 3 months to get to Katahdin before the October 15 deadline... or skip more. It became quickly clear that, despite our best efforts, we are not capable of 20 miles a day everyday. Or, I should specify, I can't. The trail in PA continued to be generally flat and beautiful, so it was easy hiking, but we still couldn't manage to get more than 17 miles in a day.

We arrived at, and passed, the AT midpoint with a kind of melancholy feeling of semi-failure since we hadn't actually walked 1,089.1 miles yet, and were greeted by a laminated piece of paper attached to a sign post that said "AT midpoint. Permanent marker coming." The next store on the trail (in MD and PA and NJ and NY, there are lots of these) is the location of the half gallon challenge, were thru-hikers attempt to consume an entire half-gallon of ice cream in a single sitting. I did not attempt, but The PHLO did and succeded after 51 minutes (Heavenly Hash). Instead, I read Hermann Hess's "Wandering", a short book of his reflections on being a nomad in Europe, which may have been the most well-articulated thing I have read about being a nomad, and if you want to understand our motivations somewhat better, I reccommend finding that manuscript.

Next stop of interest was in Boiling Springs, which was a beautiful small town. We stopped at the tavern, planning on hiking out from there. One guy bought us a round, and we ended up having lunch and chatting it up with a lady sitting alone at the other end of the bar. We came to learn that her mother had just passed and that they had enjoyed this tavern together often. After many laughs had been shared, we told her our plans from there - by now, to hike to Duncannon and skip from there to Delaware Water Gap (as we were so far behind, we figured that we would skip the rocky, nasty part of PA rather than have to skip better miles later) - but we had no idea how we were going to accomplish that, at which point she offered us a ride! We're so good at yellow-blazing that we don't even need to stick out our thumbs! We exchanged numbers with Lynn, and made plans to hike on, at which point the bartender told us that there was a resort down the road offering a $25 thru-hiker rate (hard to find this far north), complete with a swimming pool, so we went there instead. Really nice place! The next day, knowing that the stretch out of Boiling Springs was really flat and mostly in farmers' fields, we spent the day watching VHS in the basement of the resort after check out, and then hiked out at 5:30 pm. This 8 mile night hike was incredible - rather than dealing with the scorching sun and no shade in the fields, we instead were accompanied by fire-flies streching for miles, as far as the eye could see. It was magical, and definately the most enjoyable hike through this section.

A few days later, we arrived at the shelter before Duncannon, planning to stay there for the night, when in the register we saw a note from Jen and Ninja that they had been there 2 days earlier, at which point we hiked right into Duncannon and, sure enough, found them sitting in the Doyle, a thru-hiker hostel/bar landmark. They were taking off for Philidelphia the next day to hang out with his sister, and also planned to skip the rest of PA after the short visit. We had a great night hanging out with them, the first friends we had encountered in 2 weeks. The next day we called Lynn and made arrangements for her to pick us up and bring us to Delaware Water Gap, 130 miles (yea, she's awesome)! She said "I hope you don't mind, but I'd really like to stop at Yuengling Brewery on the way, it was my mom's favorite... and I'd really rather take the scenic route than the highway." Well, isn't that just perfect! The scenic route, conveniently enough, also took us right past Columcille, the park The Phlo & I are getting married at next April 17 (heads up!), so Phlo was finally able to see the place I've been dreaming of for so long, so it's official - he loved it! Yuengling Brewery was a dissapointment because they don't serve people who don't take the tour, and the last tour was at 1:30 - who goes to a brewery at 1:30 anyway?!? We went to a local pizza shop and got a taste of Chesterfield Ale anway, their lesser known and quite tasty label, which pleased Lynn because that was her mother's absolute favorite brew. Thank you so much Lynn!!

So the middle wasn't great, but it was great:)

[I can't help but add this note - Lynn told us that she saw a sign in front of someone's house that said "Government stay out of my Medicaid!" Isn't that sick? Don't they see the note on their paycheck - x% taken for medicaid!?! I'm glad we're only getting glimpses of that debate, the frustration of it all might make my heart explode!]