Over Halfway!!!

Oh my it has been a long time since the last posting. All the towns we have gone through lately have not had libraries. Well we have accomplished so much! We are now in Port Clinton, PA Mile 1207.2. We are over halfway; we have completed Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland; we are halfway through Pennsylvania; we only have 971.1 miles left...so many wonderful things.
Q&A:
To all the classes thank you so much for following the blog. I hope you have a wonderful summer break.

We decided to buy a new water filter in Front Royal. We had been using chemical treatment, but we started to think it was not good for us to ingest chemical that kills all bacteria. Nick's using the new pump in the picture, and the water tastes sooooo good.
We made it to West Virginia!

Nick's new friend.

Harper's Ferry, the "mental" halfway point. We got to go to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy there where they took our picture and put us in a book. We were number 62 and 63 to come through Harper's Ferry this year. The lady said the numbers are up 40% already this year. Another thing we had to look forward to in Harper's Ferry is our first vistor. Paul came to visit us while we were here. It was great seeing an old friend, but the visit was way too rushed. He did take me to Wal-Mart so I could get my head shaved....thanks Paul.

Harper's Ferry did not offer many places to stay, so we ended up staying with this former thru-hiker. It was a very "interesting" household, but we appreciated the hospitality.

Ms Donna gave us a ride back to the Conservancy. She fit all of us with our packs in her station wagon. It still makes me laugh to think about how that must have looked.

Harper's Ferry is full of history. Thomas Jefferson mentioned this rock in a journal entry, so they have made it a tourist attraction.

Downtown Harper's Ferry. They even have a John Brown was museum.

That's a long way to walk.

The two guys in the picture with the station wagon had run out of money for the trip, so they decided to spend their last $100 on a train ride to DC and then fly to San Diego to live like bums for the rest of the summer.

You would think this duck could find a cleaner found for her babies to swim in.

I know that you thought the Washington Monument was in D.C., but we are here to tell you that it is really here in the Washington Monument State Park. This is the first Washington Monument.

The Devil's Racecourse. This is what we have heard northern Pennsylvania is going to look like. We made it to Pennsylvania sometime after this rock pile. There was no sign.

We have made it to the halfway point, or in the vicinity anyways. Since the mileage changes every year just a bit they do not put an official plaque up, so Nick has taken on the challenge of building one for this year. He looks so proud in this pic.

And here we are standing by his plaque at mile number 1089.1.

A close up of his hard work.

Sky Pilot and Grins hanging out at the Pine Grove General Store. This place is home to the 1/2 gallon challenge. Hikers try to eat a 1/2 gallon of ice cream as fast as possible. I think the record is 6 minutes. We did not try this, and we are proud of our decision. Everyone that did said they had diarrhea for the next 10 miles.

The general store is located in the Pine Grove Furnace State Park. This is an old furnace used from around 1880' to 1930's.

This is an old picture of the same furnace.

This state park has a lot of rules appartently. I am glad they summed up the bigs ones...no alcohol and the park hours.

Nick at Pole Steeple lookout. This rocky point overlooks the whole state park.

That is a big ant den.

So we were hiking in the mountains in PA, and all of a sudden we came down off the mountains and we walked out of the woods to this. We hiked about 11 miles through fields to reach a different set of mountains. It was a very different day of hiking!!!!!

In the middle of the fields we got to go through a cute, little town called Boiling Springs. This is why they named the town this...because of the boiling water.

Swans on Boiling Springs Lake.

We have crossed all the fields and reached the other mountains, and now we get to look back at what was just hiked across. This morning we were on those mountains in the background.

A foggy view of the Susquehanna River.

Indiana Jones, me, and Lunatic at the Doyle Hotel in Duncannon, PA. It was a very nice place to hang out and eat good burgers. Indiana Jones is from Indiana and Lunatic was born and raised in Hays, KS....can you believe it...a fellow Kansan! He lives in NYC now though.

Our second visitor...Olivia and Jennifer. Olivia happened to be in Pennsylvania for her birthday, so she swung by and picked us up to take us to Amish country.

It was very interesting to go see Amish country, and also kind of sad. It was kind of like going to the zoo since they do not acknowledge us and all the tourists just stare and take pictures.

The kids have a hard time ignoring the toursits though. They try hard not to smile and wave.

We took a buggy ride to find out more about this type of lifestyle. We learned that the people that were born into the religion, but decided not to become members have decided to exploit Amish. These people are the ones that run all the tourist shops...making money off of their knowledge of the religion.

The Amish have some big homesteads!!

Amish trucks?!? I think that is against their rules.

Olivia looked very hard to find this cute covered bridge...and look an Amish family going through the bridge.

What kind of people are the Amish? All over their country they have town names like Virginville and Fertility. This is Olivia standing by the Intercourse, PA sign.

You guessed it...they also have a Blue Ball, PA.

We made it back to the trail after our Amish day, but it has been very rainy. This seems to be the best view we have seen in a few days....a fire drying our stuff out. We did get to go to a Memorial Day picnic, which was very nice...a lot of food. The people were "interesting", and then when we were leaving the picnic we saw a naked man in the woods. It was a strange day.

Josh and Natalie hanging out at the shelter with us trying to try things out. They just started 5 days ago. I hope the wet weather does not kill their spirit.

Finished the Shenandoah's and We Saw a Bear!

We are now in Front Royal, VA at mile number 959.6. We have less than 100 miles left in Virginia. The Shenandoah's were pretty, but it seemed most of the views all looked the same. We did get to see a lot of wildlife though including two bears. Actually we saw our first bear yesterday in the park, and we saw another one this morning outside of the park. We are pretty excited!!
Q&A:
1. What kind of noises do you hear at night? We hear all kinds of noises. I think most of them are trees rubbing on each other in the wind. We hear a lot of mice, owls, different howls probably from coyotes or dogs from down the mountain, and sometimes we hear steps in the leaves but we do not know what they belong to. At this point I sleep through everything, so I do not even bother to look what might be out there.
2. What is the longest you have gone between towns and food? I think our longest stretch has been 9 days. I think our longest break between showers was 14 days.
3. Are you planning on taking in any entertainment while on the hike?
4. Does the trail go through any major cities? Washington D.C. is only 72 miles away right now. We go pretty close to New York City too, but the trail does not go through any big cities. It is easier and safer for us that way too. I would hate to try to get around a huge city with all of our stuff on our back.
5. If you were to get lost, do you have flares or how would you be rescued? We do not carry flares, but we cross many roads so I imagine we would just walk until we came to a road and then find help. If we were really lost and couldn't find a road we could always start a fire like the blind man did in the last post. I would feel awful about burning the trees though. Another thought that we have had is waiting until night when we can see all the lights of houses and then just walking towards the lights.
6. When you get back, would you please come to our school and give a presentation? I would love to give a presentation if you would be interested, but how will I get to see the 8th graders since you will be in high school by the time we finish? What would you like to hear about in the presentation?
7.How do you keep from getting the scurvy? We eat oranges when we go into town. We are also taking our daily vitamins.
8. Do you find "wedgies" to be a major problem? No, not really. My pants are becoming so loose I have to use a strap to keep them up. I only experience wedgies when I pull my pants up too high. Nick says he gets wedgies sometimes, but his main issue is chaffing on his bum.

A mallard duck hanging out with us at the YMCA camping area in Waynesboro.
The view in the Shenandoah National Park.
Nick picking up a black snake.

Rachel and Justin had two friends visit for two days while we in the park. We had a blast hanging out with them. One day we hiked 6 miles and then hung out at a campground the rest of the day eating smores and telling stories.

A statue at the vistor center in memory of all the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers. Nick is trying to look buff like the statue.

Little Stony Man cliffs. There's a pool of water right on the cliffs...must be from the rain.

Rain clouds moving in. It rained on us for almost 2 hours. It was very cold.

The first bear!! We smelled something foul while we were hiking and then I looked to the right and there he was standing very still. So the answer to the question of what will we do when we see a bear: Nick will get the camera and take a picture, and then he will grab a club and run after it. That is right, Nick picked up a branch and ran after the bear. The bear slipped into the woods so quickly we couldn't see where he went. Nick climbed a tree to try to get a better view, but the bear was gone. Nick obviously did not read about what is the proper reaction to seeing a bear. The second bear we saw was very scared of us, so we only caught a glimpse of him.

Waynesboro, VA; Mile 852.5

It has been a completely different hike since the last time we blogged. The leaves have come out and the scenery is all green now, we hiked faster than we haved ever hiked, and we had a whole new goal this week...catch up to our friends...which we have accomplished just today. We set a new personal record yesterday by hiking 29.5 miles! We are pretty impressed. We only hiked about 30 minutes in the dark...it was a lot of fun! We feel great though. I bought a new pair of boots in Blacksburg, so my feet are doing much better!!! My knees are swollen still, but hopefully they will start to go back to normal. Nick is planning to go back to boots in the next town. They are definitely better than shoes. We start the Shenandoah National Park tomorrow, which means we are getting close to finishing Virginia.
Q&A:
1. How do you keep things cool, like the cheese and margarine? We don't. We try to get cheese that doesn't really need refrigeration like swiss. The margarine seems to do okay...it gets kind of runny, but it just spreads easier that way.
2. How long did Nick's beard get while you were in South America? If you get bored you should look under the month of June in 2008 on the blog. The blog is called Machalilla National Park-Puerto Lòpez, Ecuador . You can see his beard there. Don't tell him I told you but he has trouble growing hair on the left side of his face. He kind of has a complex about it, so you should tell him how manly his beard looks.
3. How do we keep from getting the swine flu? We are just lucky!!

The Audie Murphy Monument. This is where we ditched the trail and went into Blacksburg with the plague. That is what people are calling it on the trail. Ended up two other hikers got the same thing...makes me wonder if it was something to do with the water. This monument was placed here in honor of the most decorated soldier in WWII I believe. He died somewhere around here. He was actually from Texas though; hence the flag below.
Not everyday we see the Texas flag on the trail.

Look at all the green. I can't believe all the leaves came out while we were sitting in the hotel room.

The dragon's tooth. It is hard to capture these rocks in a picture because they are so large, but we tried our best. We have to admit we were not as impressed with the rocks as we should have been. We had something else in mind since the name sounded so cool. They should have named these dragon scales or something.

Also we were disappointed in the trail. We were warned about how dangerous this trail was and how we had to climb down crazy ladders. One "know-it-all" even told us dogs usually don't make it through this section. We found all of this to be a little incorrect. There were two of these "ladders". I wouldn't even call them ladders. They are two rungs placed in the rock so people do not have to take such a big step up or down. Pretty lame.

The turtles came out with the leaves. We saw 5 of these turtles in one day.

The turtle's leg.

McAfee Knob. This was a pretty cool rock. Nick is standing on the edge pointing at something important...maybe the beautiful view.

Us standing on the edge of the knob. We do not know what the black thing is right beside me...maybe a bird.

Another cool rock balancing on the edge of the mountain and another rock. I must be crazy to stand underneath it.

This spot was called the Tinker Cliffs. I can't remember the story exactly, but soldiers that went AWOL hid up here during one of the wars and tinkered on things...seriously that is how these cliffs got their name.

When we were headed into Daleville we found this little dog. His name was Buggaboo, and he got away from his owner and decided to hike the trail. He made it 8 miles before we stumbled upon him. He had tags so we called his owner and they asked us to bring him back into town. He was a sweet dog. He even slept in the tent with us. Other than a few ticks and his snoring he was the perfect trail dog.

This picture was supposed to be a joke...Nick thought it looked like a volcano. We recently found out the real reason for this smoke. A legally blind hiker lost his way a few days earlier and ended up starting this fire so he would be rescued. He was found and I think everything was okay...except the 3 acres he burned.

The James River footbridge...the longest foot-use-only bridge on the AT.

Huge trees in the fog.

A deer standing in the fog.