Once the AT reaches Shenandoah National park it really becomes the ‘Appalachian Highway’. The trail smooths out and the climbs aren’t nearly as difficult. It’s pretty nice until you reach the north end of Pennsylvania and other than the rocks it is really not all that mountainous until Mt. Greylock in Massachusetts. So you set your cruise control and head on through the green tunnel, listening to the sound of the birds along the way. It really is that noisy at times with the birds. It wasn’t until we met Merf that we began figuring out what some of them were. She’d learned some of them from another hiker. “Here…

This week we’re going to jump ahead to north-central Virginia and just go for a nice walk in the woods. We’d just left Paul C. Wolfe shelter after holing up there for the afternoon and evening the day before while it rained. We’d come nearly 16 miles from the Maupin Field shelter that morning and had made good time, arriving mid-afternoon to the Wolfe shelter. Had it not been raining I think we’d have gone straight into Waynesboro that evening instead. However, the next morning dawned clear and bright, and we booked it for Rockfish Gap where we called for a shuttle into Waynesboro. Our destination—and what I know I…

This is the first shelter into North Carolina (going north) on the Appalachian Trail. We’d left Hiawasee that morning with sunny skies, however by evening it had started clouding over. I remember thinking it was pretty hard to leave town as it was our first town stop along the way. The next morning it started snowing and we walked up a snow covered Standing Indian Mountain. It was a long day but eventually we made it to Carter Gap Shelter for the night. I need a few nights in a tent soon.

Blue Mountain Shelter was a fairly nice shelter, but I mostly remember it being pretty busy that night and morning. Yes, that is a dog in the sleeping bag. The girl leaning up against the shelter was its owner, and she was doing a short section, I think just Georgia. I remember her most that she picked up a slightly bruised if not half eaten banana from the parking area from the gap below and ate it. The mother and son there making breakfast over their stove were from Germany. I believe they ended up getting off trail because of her father’s ill health. I never heard anything more after…

A couple of weeks ago Patrice, aka Steadee, said she was writing an article on the AT in New Hampshire for a magazine. She asked if I had any photos that I might share and if I had anything to say about the trail in the area. Though I had uploaded some photos to Flickr I decided to check our hard drive for anything that I didn’t upload. There I found a lot of photos but also videos we never uploaded. They instantly brought up old memories of the trail and remembering bits of the trail that I’d forgotten about. Like this video…here we are coming up on Blood Mountain…

These people do not know what they are getting themselves into! But they are going to make it to Maine! This trail—-is so flat! I did not think it at the time! Only miles will tell you that. Two years. Two years ago since we went to Georgia and started our Appalachian Trail thru-hike. I’ve always wanted to use the blog title ‘The Two’. Why? Because I am a huge Alias fan and the first episode of Season 3 is titled The Two. It is about Sydney’s return to the CIA after two years, two years she has lost and her life is completely different. I haven’t lost two years,…

I will wax poetic for years to come about August 11, 2010. A year ago if you’d asked me where I would be today I wouldn’t have had a clue. And now, looking back a year later I would have told myself to stay another week or two in Maine and slow the heck down. We had a good pace, in fact, I loved our pace, but I would’ve like to have enjoyed Maine a bit more. Then again, I wouldn’t take back our summit day, the rare Class I day with a perfect sunrise and summitting Katahdin with some of our favorite people: Cubbie, Dilly Dally and Blue Rooster….and…

Hard to believe that one year ago we only had 281.4 miles left and we’d entered our 14th and final state, Maine, the Promised Land. I broke one of my poles later that day. Chris, I think you need to get the scraggly mountain man beard going again. Where did the last year go?

With Meghan and Jesse on the Potomac Bridge. I had pink hair. *kinda wish I could dye it again…then again, maybe not* Meghan’s Blueberry was just a glimmer in her eye. Oh, hot and sweaty…almost half way. So long ago, yet not. See who else is making it to the mental half way point this year.