I Have Not Yet Begun to Hike

I write this as I sit in the ATC HQ in Harper's Ferry West Virgina.  Yes, I am finally at HF!!!  Mile marker 1023.7, only 116.1 miles left. 

I last left you at Waynesboro VA as we headed out into the heat, and boy was it hot.  Every day for the next our days there was a heat advisory out.  Though it was only technically in the upper 80's and lower 90's (yeah, "only") that paired with humidity made for some nasty temps. 

We had trouble hitching out of town, so we Ubered out to the trail late morning (11-ish) with a 20+ day on the schedule.  Right out of town we entered Shenandoah National Park (SNP).  Fun fact: SNP was originally designed to be a tourist destination for motorists.  Started back in the 1920's, I believe, it was n of the first of the kind.  Then when the AT was laid, it criss-crossed Skyline Drive for a little over 100 miles.

So we did our 22 miles in the heat of the day, rolling in at the hut (what are called "shelters" EVERYWHERE else along the AT are called "huts" in SNP).  We ended up camping since the shelter was full. That decision turned out to be a good one.  Apparently at 2 in the morning, there was a massive ant swarm in the hut, causing a mass-evacuation to the parking lot 3 miles away.  I slept right through all the chaos.

I had a good day and put in a solid 24 miles and camped in Swift Run Gap.  I had set a good pace and got in just before dark.  Tenderfoot, who hikes slower, had stopped at the hut three miles back.  As I rolled up, there was a bear about 40 feet from my campsite.  I scared it off and I set up my bivy.  It was then I realized that Tenderfoot had our bearline.  I had just scared off a bear from where I was going to sleep, and I had no good way to hang my food.

I ended just clipping up my food in a tree and hoped for the best.  I was all okay, for I sit here with all limbs attached and no food stolen.

Yet the bear incident raises the most notable feature of SNP, there were bears everywhere.  My bear sightings going into SNP was two, leaving it was a 8.  We were in SNP for 4 days.

Anyways, we did our first 30+ mile day with a whopping 31!  The long mile in the heat was made possible by a well-placed wayside that had blackberry milkshakes.  We followed it up with an another 31 miles to Front Royal (with root beer floats as the moral-saver) where we were picked up by the Carrigans.

Family friends of Tenderfoot, they had contacted me via Tenderfoot's mom to say that we were welcome to come and hang out.  Mr. Carrigan picked us up that evening and took us to their house where Mrs. Carrigan was waiting with w massive dinner.  We showered up and enjoyed chicken and rice, with coleslaw, veggies, and Rice Crispy bars.  The next morning, after an awesome breakfast of waffles, bacon, sausage, coffee, and a peach, we headed out. 

The original plan was to leave Front Royal Friday morning, and arrive in Harper's Ferry Saturday evening where my Uncle Kurt, Aunt Mimi, and my cousin Elijah were going to meet us.  But we again left town in the heat of the day.  We were climbing up out of town, the humidity had slowed our pace to a crawl.  Then a nasty thunderstorm came out of nowhere.  That, paired with my foot randomly cramping up (it had been fine both 30 days, and all that day) so we ended up only doing 10 to the next shelter.

Plans changed, and the Kurt Jaegers met us at Ashby Gap only 10 miles away.  We picnicked in the parking lot, and ended up going home with them.  We showered, ate, played Bang, went to church with them the next day, and then headed out and hiked 10 miles to the next shelter.  So after two days where we did 30 miles, we did 30 miles in 3 days.

After a nice 23 day, we camped about one-and-a-half miles out of town.  Tenderfoot and I hiked in this morning.  We are hanging out at the ATC HQ (I believe I mentioned that...) but we will head out since we have enough food to make it a bit further. 

This is a great achievement, but we stil have a long ways to go.  We haven't even hit halfway yet, but I still feel awesome.  That's all for now.

-Levi


Bonus pictures:

Hiker food joke

Smeagol frog

A Quiet Before the Storm

Hello everyone. Look at this semi-timely post. To be honest, I have no excuse not to post since we did an unplanned zero here in Waynesboro, VA.  Let me back up to where I last left you.

After our blitz to Daleville, we had planned a zero to recuperate and eat. We had also planned to meet up with my family on the 3 and 4 of July. Neither of these was a problem. No, rather it was I had miscounted the miles and had not planned on our amazing pace that an "issue" arose.

Our rendezvous point turned out to be only 40 miles North of Daleville, and we had 4 days to do it. Do the math, that means we only have to do 10 miles a day! After about two weeks of 20+ days, that was nothing (we would do 10-14 before lunch, and then 8-12 afterwards). We did what any sane person would do. We took TWO zeros in town, and would take our sweet time with the rest.  

After we did all out town chores, we loafed around the hotel, a local coffee shop and a Wendy's. In doing so, we saw basically everyone we had met along the trail up to this point-- even some people we hadn't seen since Niel's Gap. That was pretty cool.

The following three days are summed up in the following sentence.  We slept in, took long breaks, eat extra food (since that is what we do in our down time) and overall took it easy.  We didn't do anything terribly crazy, but we had a blast.  Tenderfoot ended up spilling split pea soup on his wrist, and later sliced open his knee.  So he was Tenderwrist, and is Tenderknee (his trail name did not change, but he was in fact tender). We got invited to Canada celebration with Dragon and Camp, but we didn't make it in time.  We swam in this awesome swimming hole under a bridge, had an encounter with a bee-infested shelter and spring, and I narrowly avoided a new trail name.

I had packed another two-pound bag of Swedish Fish, and ate a pound of it the first sitting.  I proceeded to dole the remaining fish because I had been told that if I ate another two pound in 24 hours, that a new name was imminent.  So I am still Seeker... for now.

We met my family day four out of Daleville at a forest service right off the Blue Ridge Parkway.  We hiked down to a 200 foot water fall and then up to the next shelter on the trail.  Overall, we did between 5 and 6 miles as a family.  Really they got a brief taste of trail life.  They hung out with the other thruhikers over dinner (everyone later told me that they were awesome) and passed out the extra food they had packed out.  

The next morning we got off trail and went to Lynchburg for some Chick-fil-A.  Never has Chick-fil-A tasted so good. For those of you who don't know, both Tenderfoot and myself worked at Chick-fil-A in the year leading up to our trip in order to pay for it.  So we have had hour long discussions about our favorite combos as we hiked.  To say the least, we would kill for some Chick-fil-A.  Fortunately it did not come to that and the craving was satisfied with some waffle fries, nuggets and a strawberry milkshake. 

We spent the rest of the 4th of July loafing around the motel.  

The net morning, we made like Mulan and got down to business (if you didn't get that, that's on you).  We did 25 miles, then 22, and a 24.  Now the other crew of people we had outstripped out of Damascus had finally caught up.  So we spent a lot of time with the Roadrunners, Atlas, Bearman, and the Von Traps (Taco Man, Fiddle Up, and Song Bird). We had planned on only doing 22 miles into Waynesboro on day 4 from family-time, but a major factor for us going there was that Waynesboro had another Chick-fil-A, but we would have gotten into town on a Sunday.  So we ended up falling in with our previous crew and hiked with Crispy, Snow, Mc Double, Doobie, Boyscout, DJ (Dirty Jesus), Dragon and Camp into Waynesburo.

Tenderfoot had fallen behind a little bit, so there were nine hikers trying to hitch.  After a grioup of Harleys, a Mini Cooper, and some sports car drove by on this road, we figured our best bet was to try calling up some trail angels.  We split into two groups and road in (Doobie ended up finding a separate ride with some ex-Navy tech who had worked on ICBM navigation systems, under NASA on the Apollo missions, and currently taught martial arts at the local dojo). The lady who we rode with dropped us off at an Asian buffet.  I asked about the Chick-fil-A and you would have thought I had swore to her face.

"You hiked all this way for a chain restaurant?"  

I said yes.

Then she went of on this tangent about how she doesn't like their politics ("I have too many Gay friends that they hate."), how she prefers hole-in-the-wall restaurant ("I have traveled here to Colorado and never once did I stop at some chain restaurant.") and more.  I was too tired to take the flak, and it was too far to walk after 27 miles.  The others were eating here, so I ate at the Asian buffet.  It was really good, and it was okay in the end.  

Ironically, the lady had one of those "Coexist" stickers on her truck.  I figured that meant, that they would be of the mind, "I do me, and you do you--lets all just be one big happy family."  I guess not.

Anyways, on Sunday we ended going to a local church with Crispy.  The YMCA hadn't opened yet, so we had not showered.  The church had a sign that said, "Come as you are."  We took them at their word.  But it was an awesome service and they were super nice.  To finish it off.  Crispy later dumpster-diver behind Kroger and came out with six trays of corn cobs, with five cobs on each tray.  We ended up having a cook-out at the park with some butter someone had left on the table, a bottle of hot sauce we found in the hiker box, and some meat we had bought.  It was delicious.

We are getting ready to head out into this infernal heat with a goal of reaching Harper's Ferry on Saturday, so big miles up a head.  The easy day were nice, but now we are rolling.

Happy trails,

-Levi