We have walked a thousand miles. My shoes were wrecked. I picked up a new pair today in Frederick, Maryland. We took a zero day here today having hiked 12 miles yesterday into Harper's Ferry, WV where we were picked up by my Mom's cousin Nancy and her husband Happy. They have been more than hospitable. We took showers, did laundry, ate home-cooked food, they took us to see the fireworks on the inner harbor in Baltimore and then we ate ice cream. A lot of ice cream. Today we reminisced with more of the family around another great meal and then they showed us around historic Frederick and shared some local history which Happy knows quite a bit about. The Civil War had some major battles fought nearby. Walking the trail, we will be passing by some hills that if they could speak, would have some stories to tell.
So in the past hundred or so miles, we walked the length of Shenandoah Nat'l Park. It wasn't very challenging hiking, but it was hot. And there was little water to cool off in. The trail parallels Skyline Drive through the park. This would be a fun road to drive, or cycle. It isn't all that fun to walk on in the hot sun when, say, a 7 mile section of the trail is closed due to an active forest fire and no one will stop to offer you a ride because they are all tourists and the only satisfaction you can derive from the detour is walking on top of short, rock walls built by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camps during the Great Depression. I love rock walls. The CCC camp workers did an excellent job and 80 years later the walls still look great. We have seen other rock walls in the woods and I expect we will see more on up through New England. These were most likely property dividing walls. Some are just long piles of stones. Other walls are lovely examples of stacked rock, with no mortar, yet they stand firm for hundreds of years. ...back to Shenandoah. The forest isn't all that impressive there, indeed they have information boards telling of how Shenandoah is a "recycled" forest having been farmland or logged just prior to it becoming a Nat'l Park. As soon as we left the park we noticed that the trees became taller again. That being said, there are animals in the park, mostly bears. We saw 8 bears in the park. All were close. None were afraid of us. This is quite different from the bears we have encountered outside the park. All bears outside park boundaries must know that there is a chance you could be a licensed hunter. Knowing this they figure that it is harder to hit a moving target and they run away. Bears in the park seem to be aware of the stiff penalty any human would face for harassing the wildlife. They act as though our presence were simply an annoyance, especially because we weren't tossing them any food (which I'm sure more than a few tourists do). One bear simply wouldn't get out of our way on the trail. We yelled and clapped and banged our trekking poles together. We took pictures and then made a short video of us walking behind him to encourage him to get going. Check it out here....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AyhDtjHF4M
Oh, and Butch saw a Bobcat. I didn't see it because I was hiking a ways behind her. I have never seen a Bobcat in the wild. She made eye contact with it, and evidently for some time, as she tells it. She didn't take out the camera because she knew that if she had, it would have run off. So they just looked into each others eyes until the cat got bored and trotted off. I'm wicked jealous.
We experienced some weather in addition to the fires and bears and lack of water. This weather knocked down lots of trees and some folks in this part of the country are still without power. Many trees fell across the trail. Lots of little branches littered the trail and so we made a game of trying to clear them using only our trekking poles. This takes some understanding of physics to do in a way that doesn't look to awkward, doesn't use too much effort, actually removes the branch from the trail and does so without slowing your forward progress. We prided ourselves on our 'trail maintenance'. Thankfully no trees or large branches fell on our tent. This is a risk taken by anyone who sleeps in the woods with a thin sheet of nylon separating your face from everything above. As we heard the storm coming and were grabbing our stuff and diving into the tent, I looked up and was reassured to see in the flashing strobe of lightning that the trees overhead were alive and looked like they could withstand a good breeze.
I promised to post some pictures of people. Here are some...
We passed from West Virginia into Maryland, across the Mason-Dixon line into Pennsylvania. Not too far into the state we crossed the halfway point on the trail. It is hard to believe that we have been walking for 3 months and have only walked half of this trail. Just past the halfway point is Pine Grove Furnace State Park. There is a General Store there that sells ice cream and is home to the "Halfway Half Gallon Challenge". When we arrived there were only two half gallons left, both were peanut butter cup. This is the flavor Butch was hoping to find but it is not my favorite. The big crew of slack-packers ahead of us had cleaned the place out the day before. So Butch got a big tub and I went for a smaller bowl of ice cream with a cheeseburger. Butch sat down to dig into the frozen brown and immediately upon lifting the lid declared, "There is no way I'm eating all this". With my help we polished it off and then each had a cheeseburger for dessert. 
