Saturday, June 28, 2008

BIG WRITE UP PART 1 - SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK

Hello to all the faithful readers! I am sitting in the public library here in Harper's Ferry, WV - the halfway point (at least psychologically if not physically) of the AT! Since I didn't make any stops since seeing Elizabeth, I haven't had a chance to blog, and have a lot to tell you all. So I will try to write a couple entries - this one will concern Shenandoah National Park. After I last wrote, I left Waynesboro and my buddy Orion and I entered the Shennies, which I will describe as a thru-hiker's vacationland. The trails in the Park are nicely maintained and not very steeply graded - a decent hike for any weekender, but a breeze for anyone who's already walked 900 miles. Additionally, there are 4 waysides along the route that serve food and delicious blackberry milkshakes, as well as a few campgrounds and other places to get water and food and showers. Not very backcountry at all - I didn't have to filter my water at all. Not to mention, Skyline Drive is parallel and close to the AT at all times, so whenever you feel like blue-blazing around some pointless climb, you may. Orion and I were able to punch out a 27.3 mile day the first day, and I followed it with an 18 mile day in an effort to meet Elizabeth on time. Orion would've come with me, but fell in with a couple Germans who flew to DC and bought a cheap van and are traveling across the country, with Shen. NP as their first stop. They were feeding and drinking Orion up pretty well, so he was slow for day 2. I admit, I did blue-blaze on Skyline Drive a few times for these days, but only for a total of 9 miles. The road is simply too boring, and as the weekend drew near, the amount of traffic grew to be too much to want to walk beside. However, good things happen on the road - we hit two instances of trail magic when a thruhiker's mom gave us chicken strips and soda, and a fellow thruhiker named Bojangles, who is leaving the trail, picked us up in his pickup truck for an impromptu party at an overlook. It was this last trail magic event that Elizabeth found me at, and it was a sweet reunion indeed. Other hikers who weren't there said they heard about the lovey lovey going on. Unfortunately, the party reunion caused me to skip a 17 mile section of the trail that I didn't go back and do. This is a break of one of the three cardinal rules I have for myself - always walk in a continuous manner (no skipping), always walk north, and always carry my pack. Elizabeth's visit was a worthwhile break of the rules though, and as another hiker Burrass tells me, "at the end of the day we'll get a patch that says "2,000 miler" but since the trail is 2,176 miles, I figure we got a hundred seventy-six miles to play with." I broke my second rule with Elizabeth as we walked 8 miles south from Skyland Lodge to Big Meadows Lodge on Saturday. I should also explain that this day was the Summer Solstice - the longest daylight of the year and otherwise known as NAKED HIKING DAY. Well, I'm not one to break from trail tradition, even if it's on a Saturday in the most crowded section of Shenandoah National Park. Let's just say my entry in the trail register at the lunch shelter read something like, "Keychain is in ur woods, observing the solstice. Lady E saw a bare."

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