After 161 miles on the trail, we're now in Harpers Ferry, home of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. We checked in, got our AT thru-hiker's hangtags, and got our picture taken, to be entered into the trail logbook at the ATC. We are official now! Should you ever find yourself in Harpers Ferry, you can look up our picture in the book, as we are now part of Appalachian Trail history.

We are taking a "zero" today - a day off. We wanted to spend some time exploring this historic town, but as it happens, we will end up spending most of our day resupplying food, making a trip to the outfitter to make some gear adjustments, and my spending time at the library to put together this blog entry. On top of that, it is a rainy day, not so good for exploring, so we'll have to save the exploration for another time. Back to food resupply: we have shopped at Martin's Foods twice now, and have been amazed and impressed by the great selection and variety of stuff available to hikers - we love this store!

I want to send a Thank You! to Marty Leistikow, who has responded to this blog. I appreciate the feedback, and I encourage anyone who is reading this to send me a note to let me know you're out there - just click the Feedback link here or at the top of this page.

We had great fun at the hostel in Front Royal, and it was fun to meet some really interesting people there, but once we left there, the trail was relatively non-social as we encountered very few people. Although we exchanged some contact info with a couple of the folks we met at the hostel, we got on the trail ahead of them, and we may never see them again. It is a pattern of the trail to encounter people sometimes once, sometimes for a day or two; each person or group is travelling at different rates, thus paths do cross and may or may not again converge.

We arrived in Harpers Ferry on Friday around noon after 54 miles of trail. The section of the trail we traversed includes what is called the Roller Coaster, which is a series of climbs and descents of approximately 500 feet each. It may not sound like much, but there are eight (or so) of them, one after another, and they are rocky and steep, rather grueling. Additionally, on many parts of this section of trail we encountered very rocky paths that require a lot of careful footwork, which makes for slow progress and sore feet.

When we started at the South end of Shenandoah, our legs, lungs, hearts and bodies were not adapted to the long and strenuous conditions on the trail. I wouldn't say that we're fully adapted yet, but we're in much better condition than we were two weeks ago. Now, under the right conditions, we are easily capable of 15 miles a day, and can power up hills almost as fast as we can going downhill.

On most of our nights on the trail we've been sleeping in huts or shelters. We'd heard stories about how they are mouse infested, but we have not found that to be the case, perhaps because we're early in the season and it is still relatively cool. We don't know what we have ahead of us yet, as far as mice go. Funny story about the shelters: One night we shared a hut with several others, some younger folks out to "bag miles." In the evening after dark, one guy was reading a book by the light of his headlamp. Apparently he accidentally flashed his light in another guy's face, who yelled out "DUDE! Light discipline! Fuck!" That's a new term for me - light discipline!

In addition to sleeping in the shelters we have tented several times, once in a public campground and other times along the trail. Our last tenting experience was the most challenging because we had to bushwack a spot some 100 yards off the trail. Nevertheless, it turned out to be quite spectacular because we had a 50 mile view out towards Washington DC and were able to see some of the tall buildings on the horizon. In the morning after we packed up our gear we were trudging back out to the trail, and I nearly stepped on a skunk as he (she?) side-eyed me suspiciously. But he and I reached a gentlemans agreement not to bother each other and went our respective ways without incident. He was quite a handsome skunk though, and I regret not getting a picture of him.

I have to mention Tide Laundry Detergent. When we were at Lewis Mountain campground and did laundry, our only choice for laundry detergent was Tide. Our clothes stunk of Tide for days afterwards. Here at our hostel in Harpers Ferry, again Tide is our only choice for laundry detergent. We elected to use our Dr. Bronners soap instead, just to avoid the Tide scent in our clothing. Despite that, the towels and bed sheets in the hostel were washed with Tide and reek of it. I don't know how anybody can stand that smell but it does not belong on clothing, or anywhere close to a human nose.

I'm running out of time here, and I want to get some pictures in, so that's all for now. Enjoy the pics!