Day 93

Another 18 mile day planned with rj. The trail really is much better when hiking with other ppl. Not a very exciting day. We did get rj to build his first fire on the trail when we got to the shelter. It seems my alcohol container got deformed while I was taking my zeros and I'm down to just one dinners worth of alcohol. Luckily there is lots of wood.

Day 93

Another 18 mile day planned with rj. The trail really is much better when hiking with other ppl. Not a very exciting day. We did get rj to build his first fire on the trail when we got to the shelter. It seems my alcohol container got deformed while I was taking my zeros and I'm down to just one dinners worth of alcohol. Luckily there is lots of wood.

Day 92

From bears den rj wanted to do a short day to red hollow shelter. I wanted to do an 18 to dicks dome. Either way we would be done with the roller coaster.

When we got to red hollow the water source was dry so rj decided to keep hiking. Once we were out of the roller coaster the trail got practically perfect. Nothing but smooth packed clay dirt. Then we go up to sky meadow state park. Which had an absolutely gorgeous mountain.

Day 91

Thanks to Bill I for an early start and made really good time. I stopped at the first shelter south of harpers ferry for some water. This shelter was beautiful and is only 2.5 miles from rt. 9.

I got ahold of rj who said he was taking an easy day and stopping at the bears den hostel. I had planned to skip the place since I had just taken 3 zeros. The nobos had said it was a great hostel and with rj there I decided to stay. Oh I forgot. I passed the 1000 miles to go mark.

Day 90

The plan is to have Sam take me up to Frederick where I will catch up with friends at Comsource and make a run over to the local Motor Vehicle Department to get a new Drivers license and try to figure out what is wrong with the insurance on the Saturn. Then Bill is going to drop me off at Harpers Ferry on his way home and I'll hike to the nearest campsite or shelter. The plan almost worked. The MVA took basically the whole day so I didn't get to stop off and chat at work like I wanted to. I did go see a doctor who said my ankle was fine if I gave it 2 more days of rest and ice. So I compromised and stayed at bills house instead of hiking.

Day 89

Another Zero. Ankle felt significantly better hardly any soreness at all and it actually felt normal to the touch. Had a nice day where we ran up to Chris Twombly's house to pick up my guide for the rest of the hike sure d a box of Jerky mom had sent me. She sent a lot of Jerky I'm going to be eating basically nothing but that for the next few days. We also ran up to Harpers Ferry where I got my picture taken and entered into the through hiker picture book as the 34th?(not sure about that number) southbound hiker.

Day 88

Zero Day at Sam's place. Spent the day just sitting around watching some Anime and icing the ankle. I did make a run to REI to pick up a new shirt and socks and managed to spend an extra 100 on some really nice lightweight warm-up pants. I plan on using these as my camp pants from here on out as it was starting to get colder at night. They will double as windbreaker if I need something like that again.

Day 87

A nice easy day into Maryland to meet Samantha at 2pm at Pen Mar state park. My ankle was still sore so I decided to not do the Maryland challenge and just take some time off when I got to maryland. I was still hiking with Busch and he was planning on giving it a shot so we were going to split up after we got to Maryland. While we were waiting on Sam we noticed that less then 2 miles from us was a Golden Corral. We managed to convince Sam to take us up there and pig out. After that I have a few zeros to heal the ankle.

Day 86

Not an exciting day just hiked from the shelter past the unmarked halfway point according to my guide and called it quits after 20 miles. Very nice and easy trail. The only interesting thing of the day was passing the Quarry Gap Shelters. Very nice linked pair of shelters that are by far the best maintained shelters on the trail. There was stacked firewood, flowers, a raked gravel area, games and what I'm sure is a beautiful Azalea grove when its in full bloom. I would have stayed there but I had made arrangements to meet Samantha from work the next day and I didn't want to walk the 20 miles to the spot I was meeting her in the morning. ((No pictures not sure why but my pictures for today didn't get uploaded to picasa))

Day 85

From Boiling Springs I decided to just hike to the halfway point and camp at the nearby shelter. This was an easy 20 mile day but there was a significant challenge in the middle. Right before the halfway point was where the Half Gallon Challenge was hosted. The half gallon challenge is to eat a half gallon of ice cream. You can do the easy way out and eat the "half gallon" which is really just 1.5 quarts or man up and eat the "half gallon" plus a pint. I wimped out and did the "half gallon". There was only one flavor left, mint chocolate chip, so I didn't have a choice of flavor. I had been warned by nobos to pick a flavor that I didn't want to eat again for a while, luckily this worked out as I've never been a big fan of mint chocolate chip.

I managed to beat this challenge easily. It only took me 23 minutes to finish. I considered doing the extra pint but with 4 more miles to hike I called it quits there. On my way to the shelter I passed the official ATC halfway point but not the actual halfway point.

Day 84

I had 15 miles to hike to get to Boiling Springs to catch up with Smiles and see the show. They were by far the easiest miles I've done yet. Nothing but cornfields and flat land.

 I got up early cause I wanted some time to check out the town as I had heard its very nice to hikers. At 10:45 I got a text from Busch, who is staying in town at the hotel where the play was being held, saying that the show starts at 1pm. I tried to get a hold of Smiles and let her know but she had her phone turned off. So I did some crazy fast miles, it took me just over an hour to do the 4 miles to get to town. I managed to find Smiles and let her know about the show in time to see it. The show was a production of Hair Spray which turned out to be a lot better than i expected. I thought it would be a local production but the entire cast had broadway or off broadway show experience and were very good. I ended up staying in the hotel and splitting a room with Busch as that turned out to be cheaper to do then just seeing the show alone.

Day 83

We had another short day planned to the next shelter. The guide book says that there was no camping allowed between the next shelter and Boiling Springs. The area between these was all farmland and backyards. On our way to the shelter we passed some section hikers who said they had just Stealth camped in a pasture and nobody bothered them. Smiles decided that she wanted to take the chance and do the stealth camp so she could get to town sooner and explore while I decided to stay at the shelter and just get up early since my ankle had started to hurt. The shelter was also infamous on the trail for having the "Taj Mahal" privy.

I'm not sure why it was named this as I've seen nicer privy's before but it was much larger and more spacious then most other privies.

Day 82

Smiles and Busch were staying at the Doyle as well, and after my encounter with the snake I decided I didn't want to hike alone until I got out of Pennsylvania, or at least the snakey part of it. Busch was going to take a zero to let some blisters he got from his new shoes and Smiles was going to be doing a very short 3 days to get to Boiling Springs where she was going to go to a theater production on wednesday. So I tagged along with Smiles for a 4 mile day. Very easy, very relaxing, with some decent views, and my ankle was still hurting so a short day was for the best.

When we got to the shelter we had a fire going and kept it going for 5 or 6 hours. Normally when we build fires it goes for about an hour while someone cooks dinner or scares the bugs away.

Day 81

Since I cut it short yesterday I had to do a 25 to get to the Doyle. The ankle was hurting more today then before I took my zero but I wasn't going to spend another day near that snake or that monkey creature. Passed some very nice views of the Susquehanna on my way down to Duncannon.

The Doyle is a famous old hotel on the trail. Known for having some of the sketchiest rooms you will probably ever stay in in your life. Mine wasn't that bad, I think that is cause we got some of the better used ones since there were only 3 of us southbounders staying there.

Day 80

Ankle was better but still sore. I decided to just go ahead and walk on instead of staying in the shelter since I didn't know how long it would take for the ankle to heal. I wanted to head to the Doyle in duncanan but that was 48 miles away. So i could do it in 3 short days or 2 long ones. Since I was in Pennsylvania and had just taken a zero I decided to go for two long ones. I wanted to do a few long days to prep myself for hiking the Maryland challenge once I got down there. The hike went fairly well considering my ankle hurt anytime I tried to use it. When I got to about mile 23 I had a fun encounter with a Rattlesnake. This guy here was hanging out sunning himself next to the trail.

I didn't see him since he was black on black behind a log and some shrubs, he didn't know I was coming so when I stepped right next to him he was as scared and jumped for the bushes. At which point i saw him and jumped 5 feet backwards. I bushwacked around the snake since he didn't seem inclined to move anymore and got another picture of him without a log or bush hiding him from me.

At this point I decided to call it quits for the day. My ankle was starting to hurt bad and that snake made me decide to wait for a better time of day to hike in. There was an old abandoned town a half mile further on where camping was allowed. As soon as the sun set I heard something large hopping around in the canopy of the trees. I have no idea what the creature was I didn't get a good look at it but it was bigger then a squirrel, about the size of a racoon, but it was jumping around in the tippy tip of the trees. I figure it was someone's pet monkey that got loose or freed.