Playtime is the Best Time: Maryland

So Maryland. This state was right around a turning point for me. Heading into Shenandoah a week earlier things started changing. You could see the end of Virginia and I was getting over the Virginia blues and felt like I was making progress again. It was at that time I made the 20 miles a day limit. I didn't want to rush through this trip. MD is only about 40 miles total. In fact many people do the '4 state challenge' of getting from VA to PA in 24 hours. I think its about 57 miles total. I on the other hand slowed my roll and took 4 days to get through MD. I wasn't going to run the trail and be miserable like all the people I saw passing me. I was actually having fun why would I want this trip to end any sooner? Plus just hanging out and hiking half days is awesome. Alarm clocks and schedules defeat the purpose.

Civil War era War Correspondents Memorial.

The first completed Washington Monument. I was pretty excited because I didn't realize this was on the trail. I also didn't realize that I was so close to Antiedem. I've always wanted to visit the battle field, but couldn't, then I was talking to the curator of the Washington Monument that you could see the battle field and sunken road from the top. He told me what to look for. It was a pretty cool surprise.

Blondie up on Annapolis Rocks. We stopped early here and I'm glad we did. It had THE best spring on the trail and some pretty sweet views. You have to stop and enjoy stuff like this. And you have to be willing to hike the .5 miles off the trail otherwise you miss all the good stuff.

Caught a pretty good sunset off Annapolis Rocks.

The Pink Lady Slippers started popping up around here. One day in PA I was hiking along an old road in the middle of what used to be a mining village and was exploring off the trail. I was about 200 yards or so off the trail and walked behind a pile of rocks and saw a whole hillside full of Pink Lady Slippers. It was pretty amazing.

There was a road going right up to this spot. So of course everything was covered with spray paint. I'm kinda torn. On one hand roads and observation decks are ugly and attract people that vandalize and leave trash and cause problems, but on the other hand easily accessible views like this help people learn to love the outdoors and respect it more.