Oceanic Wilderness

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed by email! Thanks for visiting!Misti called me this evening. They are spending the night in a hostel on the Pennsylvania/New Jersey border at Delaware Water Gap. They spent their wedding anniversary on the trail yesterday. Today they were able to celebrate it with a short 13 mile day and a steak dinner. They’ll be resupplying soon in Unionville.

Misti’s brother here. I talked to Misti and Chris over the weekend. They had just finished lunch and were continuing on for a few more miles. I think they are about tired of walking in PA. Tired of climbing over rocks. That’s all I got for now. They should hit a town soon.

As an aside, I’ve barely taken any photos on this trip…the majority of the credit can go to Chris.

The shelter that Pie & Cake came out to. Full house that night.

Tucked away in Maryland is the original Washington Monument. Bet you didn’t know there was one older than the one in DC!

One other thing PA is known for are the copperheads and timber rattlers that hang out in the rocks. We were at a shelter just inside the PA border one morning when Chris had just gotten out of the shelter and onto the wood platform below. I’d just let the air out of my mattress when I thought I heard someone else letting theirs out too. Chris looked at his electronics bag thinking it was making the noise, when we looked at each other and I said that I thought it was a snake. Sure enough, right behind my boots was a timber rattler, pissed off that we’d woken up.…

We officially passed halfway on Saturday morning. It was exciting to see the sign and we let out some whoops and yells. Pretty much everyone you talk to feels like we’ve already done way more, but of course you look at the map and there is a long way still to go. But, we’re doing pretty darn well. The shelter registers are starting to show fewer and fewer familiar names. Many names that I recognize are ones that I’ve never met but they are a week to two weeks ahead. We know a few people, maybe three, that are ahead about a week that we’ve hiked with, but other than…

Our first nasty snake of the trail. This was by the Manasses Gap shelter in Northern Virginia.

When we got back on the trail we noticed a pink bloom. It took us a second to realize it was a rhododendron blooming…we didn’t think we’d see them blooming. That week back after Ashleigh’s funeral was tough and I had some crying episodes and after we got down off of Dragon’s Tooth someone had left a blossom on a rock and it was just when I was thinking of Ashleigh and home. Then I decided that that would be my way of Ashleigh saying hi to me. Of course now that the rhododenrons aren’t blooming anymore and we are lower than their elevation I am having to find other…