Do What You Can

We had  hoped that November seventh and eighth would be the days we hiked the remaining miles of the Maryland section, giving us our first completed state. But with Jake's hip hurting, we didn't want to get 5 miles in to a 10 mile hike and realize he couldn't make the remaining distance. Fortunately some of the next section was crisscrossed by several roads making a few short sections we thought we could tackle during the work week. 

Since Jake is working remote right now, and I'm reserving some time off from dogsitting to make this possible, we were able to spend the week in the area. After a full day of rest, we headed out on Tuesday to try our first tiny section: an almost half a mile, up from a small side road to the parking lot of the Maryland's Washington Monument. This monument actually predates the DC version, although it's not nearly so tall. Since that went well with no pain, we followed up with a one mile lunchtime section that connected with the portion we had hiked on Sunday. Then he took a couple more days off to heal before the weekend. 

On Saturday we filled in some gaps and hiked a total of 5.1 miles over 3 small sections, repositioning our cars in between. This was to make sure we had to opportunity to stop if things were hurting, and meant we didn't have to carry much with us. The longest section was the 2.5 miles from the Washington Monument up to Boonesboro road, which connected the two midweek hikes. 

While moving the cars we had to use earplugs riding in Jakes car, because one night the preceding week we had left it for several hours in a Walmart parking lot and gone to a nearby McDonald's to stress eat fast food and distract ourselves from the election by streaming some shows using their wifi. During that time, someone came to Jake's car, and, despite the fact that it was parked near the busy grocery entrance, they got under his car and stole the catalytic converter. This meant that our exhaust was disconnected from the muffler, making the car exceptionally loud. Luckily, this wasn't something that affected our ability to drive the car, so we resolved to wait to fix it until we were back home, away from the area. 

The other two sections we did connected farther south, although we hiked everything in a northbound direction. I still generally want to get the NOBO experience, and don't want to find myself avoiding hard climbs by switching up directions. The other two pieces we hiked Saturday connected from the Reno Monument up to the half mile we did just below the Washington Monument. 

Yes it was quite a bit of hopping around. I will write more about the thru hike options and names (NOBO, SOBO, flip flop, leap frog) another day, but I think our sort of random but generally nobo sections should be called Quantum Leap. 

Jake was feeling good, but the next section of trail was over 6 miles road to road, and a lot of elevation gain. We both thought a flat section would be a better idea, and since we weren't camping, we could drive closer to home at night, and split up the return trip a little. So we chose a section along a ridge that ran beside the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. We covered the 6 miles of trail easily in terrain that looked dramatic with brilliant sassafras leaves in the clearings and full fall colors in the valleys below, but was warm enough for t-shirt and shorts, and gently rolling land. We went really slow, took a long lunch and paused in the middle of the second half for a sun induced nap among the leaves. 

Overall a lovely weekend, but one that left us with 16 miles yet to do in Maryland, and one very loud car.  

Halloween on the Appalachian Trail

At the end of October, we headed to Maryland for two weekends of hiking, hoping that we could complete the 40 miles of trail there over four days. On the first day, Halloween, we headed out from Wolfsville Road and hiked up to Pen Mar, just below the Pennsylvania state line, where I had hiked north from in September. We traveled up with two cars so we would not need a shuttle, and left one parked at Pen Mar before heading down to Wolfsville and heading out. It was a beautiful, relatively warm day. There was still a broad mix of leaves on the trees, with some turned deep red, and yellow, while others were still mostly green. We spotted some interesting fungus and kept up a good pace. 

The trail had a couple good rises to climb, but the trail was mostly rock free and easy walking except a portion coming down from the High Rock overlook, where it was mostly loose rock and picking our way over the rubble pile. But compared to what we had done earlier in Pennsylvania for miles and miles, I barely remembered it by the next day. The weather was clear, bright, and warm, promising summer rather than winter. We started later than I would have liked, because I prefer to allow myself the option of going a mile an hour, and finishing before dark. I am usually faster though, so we were able to keep up the pace and only had to pull out the headlamp for the last twenty minutes on trail. Fortunately by that time, we had reached a wide carriage lane, or old logging road, and the trail was level and clear of any major tripping obstacles. 

It was lovely since it wasn't too cold, to finish Halloween walking pleasantly along and having the full moon come up. As we came up to the park, there is a large covered shelter that overlooks the valley below, and we went up to look at the view, and spooked a couple of cats relaxing there. Then I turned off the headlamp and let the moon light us along the paved pathway to the parking lot where our car was waiting. A good hike, 10.78 miles.  

The next day we hopscotched south and hiked north to Wolfsville road from the Annapolis Rocks trailhead near I-70. This was an uphill climb into heavy fog and sporadic, light rain. All flat and easy along the ridgetop except for a brief Rocksylvania type section. It was a set taken directly from Sleepy Hollow, and spoke Halloween in every way that Saturday's sunny hike had not. It was silent and wonderful. Not a world or weather I would want to live in, but dream like to wander for a day. Along the trail we met a pair of women with wet hair and damp clothes, disoriented from missing a trail turn off. The weather was 50F, but in those conditions risky. We helped, along with another hiker, point them on the way to a trail out. They were in phone contact with a family memeber who was driving to pick them up, and although we offered some food and a hot hands said they were good and comfortable to hike the extra miles. A friendly reminder to bring a map, and some emergency weather gear. We are hiking with guthooks on one phone and Alltrails on the other. a compact rain jacket or an emergency blanket can be life saving in what might seem like mild weather. After that, our day was uneventful, and the fog finally cleared towards the end of our hike was we climbed through a small rocky pass and started the descent to the road where the extra car was parked. This is where Jake's hip started to hurt him with every step. So we had to go slowly, and tried some side stepping and backwards walking where flat to ease the strain. It seems he likely has some bursitis in his hip, so we'll have to give it rest for it to heal, and also work on better stretching and strength training at home. The last half mile took us an hour, and I am so glad he made it through most of the hike first. 9.7 miles total.