June 30 - July 9

Sorry I've been slow getting this updated; hopefully I will have a bunch of stuff to put up here soon.

-- The Angels dropped me off at Harper's Ferry on the 30th. Wish I could have taken more time to walk around town and see all the historical stuff; the trail runs right through the town, past ruins, etc, but I couldn't stay too long; just waited for the outfitter to open up to buy stove fuel and by 11 am I crossed the bridge (an old RR bridge) into Maryland; 5 states down, 9 more to go.

-- The trail in Maryland and the first part of Pennsylvania was really, really nice and very easy. The Potomac Appalachian Trail Club really does a fantastic job maintaining the trail, and keeping the shelters really nice. Maryland even has a free little campground, just for hikers, that features hot showers; wish they had more than 40 miles of trail.

-- Crossed the Mason-Dixon line, but I really knew I was out of the south when I crossed US Route 30; take a right hand turn, and that would take me all the way to my hometown on the Jersey Shore.

-- Finally did my first 20 mile day, on July 3rd. Yay me.

-- On July 4th, I reached Pine Grove Furnace state park in Pennsylvania. This is significant, because it's the half-way point of the trail (actually, with various relocations over the years, the mathematical halfway point is now something like 3 miles before the park; since trail work and minor relocations happen all the time, nobody ever knows exactly where). I marked the event with, as is AT tradition, a half-gallon of ice cream. 3000 calories of peanut butter ripple in just under an hour wasn't that hard, but I won't be doing it again anytime soon.

-- My parents, brother and sister-in-law all met me at Pine Grove Furnace on the 4th and took me up to the brother's house in Hershey. Took a couple of days off, and then started using that as a base of operations to do dayhikes all this week, what my mother calls "commuting" to the trail. Get dropped off in the morning, hike all day carrying just a daypack, get picked up in the evening to go home to a shower and dinner. Sweet. I'd hoped I could do big miles this way, but it isn't working out so much; I am enjoying the rest and relaxation, as well as doing a lot of chores to set up the second half of the hike. (I also feel kind of bad about the fact that my sister-in-law has loaned me her lavender-and-pink Disney Princess bookbag to use on these dayhikes, and by the end of the week I'm going to return it reeking of sweat.)

I'll be here a couple more days and then put on the big pack this weekend, heading for New Jersey.

-- The terrain this week has been really odd. There was a beautiful flat walk across the rolling farmland of the Cumberland Valley, but there has also been plenty of indications of why they call this "Rocksylvania" or "The place where boots go to die." Lots of rocky ridge walking with anklebreakers galore, and they say it gets worse as you head farther east...