Virginia

Virginia is long and it takes forever to get through. Parts of it are kinda boring. Parts of it are incredibly beautiful. I left a lot of friends in VA. Some made it to the end and some ended up home. I don't really feel like typing out stories today.

Lots of VA trail is on rolling farmland. Its pretty neat, but there never is any water, unless you want to drink cow field runoff.

Climbing the Dragon's Tooth.

Climbing down from the Dragon's Tooth can be sketchy in some spots.

Typical McAffee knob picture.

Being alone on McAfee Knob for the sunset was definitely a highlight of my entire summer. There was really something special about that moment. Its hard to believe it was so long ago.

I'll leave you with this field of pink Trillium.

Shenandoah National Park

Waynesboro, VA. The best kept secret on the trail. Nobody ever knows anything about this town before they get there. You think its just another town on the trail. It doesn't have some famous hotel or hostel like Duncannon or Kincora, it doesn't have a fancy festival like Damascus or Franklin. What it does have is the nicest people in the country (well maybe tied with Delaware Water Gap, PA). The town is off trail and its a dangerous hitch, but there is a welcome center with a list of names and phone numbers of people in town that will come pick your smelly hiker butt up and give you a ride to town. And once you get to town you're hard pressed to walk anywhere without tons of people trying to drive you around.
Jon, Stunned Mullet and I where at the post office and this lady offered us a ride back to the trail. We told her we would be in the PO for about a half an hour and she said "well okay. I'll be waiting in the green suburban over there" and waited on us. Such a great town.

and they have giant pizza.

Stunned Mullet taking a lazy day with Jon and I.

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Azalea making everything smell like bubblegum.

I only saw 3-4 Rhodendron bloom the entire trail. I guess thats what you get for an early season hike.

Lousewart is one of my favorite flowers and I don't know why.

The AT is kinda odd in SNP. Especially for a national park. It pretty much just crisscrosses this road the entire way through the park. You're rarely more than a half mile or so from the road. You cut through a lot of picnic areas, campgrounds, and pass some "Waysides" which sell delicious blackberry shakes, and overpriced food and stuff like that.

Terrapin Station is a nice little hostel near the end of SNP run by the Grateful Greenpeace Guy. He likes some band or something. I stayed here with StuMullet, The Boss, Spammy and Earl. It was a real nice peaceful hostel stay that I was trying to avoid. I'm glad I didn't. The problem is that The GreenpeaceGuy hiked the PCT and had some books on it. I stayed up late reading them and developed this awful desire to do that trail next....

I was at an amazing peace in SNP. Its an odd park. Everything worth seeing is off the AT so if you just stick to the white blazes you miss most of the sights and beauty (why else would you hike?). This is where I came to the realization that I was going to intentionally slow down and enjoy everything. I had an awesome day where I hiked 12 hours and only made it 13 miles. well I did more laying around and watching the birds than actually hiking.
This is pretty much also where my hiking crew changed. Some of my friends went home around this time, or hiked at a different pace than myself and I met most of the people I finished with around here.

west virginia

WV. all seventeen miles of it. So this is the 'psychological half-way point' whatever that means. All I know is its a pretty sweet state for such a small one. You have some great Hostels and free places to stay. You have the ATC headquarters, lots of history and the only thing that really matters YOU'RE OUTTA VA.

Pretty neat place. We checked out some of the buildings and the John Brown Museum. Over all nice place to chill out.

As you can tell by the white blaze the trail goes right through historic Lowertown Harper's Ferry. These steps are hella old and hand carved out of solid rock.

No real exciting stories come to mind with WV. Next up I'll put some pictures from Shenandoah and one of the best weeks on the trail for me.

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.

These tracks mark the MD/PA border and the Mason-Dixon line and also the changes the Appa-latchin trail to the Appa-layshun trail.