Date: 2008-05-05
From: Comfort Inn Harpers Ferry WVA 

To: Rocky Run Shelter MD
Miles today: 15.5
Weather: overcast clouds

Day 78 ¢ Monday May 5 ¢ Rocky Run Shelter MD ¢ Miles Today: 15.5 Total Miles: 1027.0We were up at 6:00 this morning and, believe it or not, for the first time in about a month, we didn't have our hiker's appetite. The last 2 weeks of carrying probably double the amount of food has really helped. We even have our bellies back! Now we seem to be content with just normal sized meals. So we did something very odd this morning - we only did one sitting at breakfast! Quite unbelievable! We're hoping our appetites come back, though, as in 3 days we see Brakeman's ¢girlfriend¢, Robin, and in 6 days we see Mrs. & Mrs. Grasshopper and we hope to do them proud and show them our huge appetites! We also hope that by the time we see them, we don't have these big bulging bellies as we've been telling everybody how skinny we are. Isn¢t that weird?Before hitting the trail, we stopped by the Post Office to pick up our food drop. The food drop was good except that it was missing our dehydrated chicken so we're going to be a little low on our protein for the next 6 days, but I think we¢ll still live! We also got a package containing an Appalachian Trail Wild Flower book from John. He did not like our technical names for the flowers, i.e., the blue ones, the white ones and the purple ones. The book company shipped the book in vacuum-sealed cardboard. Never seen that before. Quite unusual. We¢re getting better on these food pickups. We were in and out of the post office in 15 minutes and on the white blazed trail by 8:30!The trail took us through historic sections of Harper¢s Ferry. The amount of old buildings, the uniqueness of their structures and the history of the area made it quite interesting. We just did not have the time to take it all in. Three miles of our hike this morning was along the C & O Canal Towpath, which made for nice flat quick walking. Perhaps someday we¢ll come back to Harper¢s Ferry and bike more of the towpath as well as check out more of the historic area of Harper's Ferry. We believe the Canal Towpath is over 160 miles long from Cumberland to Washington, DC with designated campsites along the way. A pretty neat opportunity if we do make it back to this area. The other big event today is that we ran into Bare Fodder, who we have not seen since Hot Springs. It was neat to touch base with him and it appears we will be hiking with him for quite a while as he's doing about 15 miles a day as well. He's decided that the 20-mile days just don't allow enough time for the body to recover for the next day, which we're in agreement with. He's 70 years old and still going strong. He has a pinched nerve in the side of his thigh, but apparently it is not impacting his hiking, so that's good to hear. He¢s on his 3rd pair of boots, as the 2nd set of boots that he broke in at Shenandoah did not seem to work well for him.We arrived at camp about 5:00 after a small lunch break and a nice afternoon break at a historic museum and memorial for war correspondents who were killed in the call of duty. We pitched the tent, surrounded just about completely, by poison ivy. We have to make sure these days that we do not wander off trail at all. We even try not to touch the bottom of our hiking poles, as we¢re afraid they might have oils from the poison ivy on them. If we complete this adventure without getting poison ivy, I think it's going to be a miracle. Rocky Run Shelter is a new shelter that they haven't quite finished yet. The sign up at the top of the blue blaze says it's 99% ready, which in this case means the walls are up, but the roof is just a blue tarp. We¢re camped down the hill from the shelter near a spring. At the shelter tonight is Bare Fodder and a weeklong hiker. Unfortunately both of them took a wrong turn about a mile or so from camp and hiked for about a half hour before realizing they were no longer on the white blazed trail. So rather than doing 16 miles, Bare Fodder did about 18 miles, which is too bad because his feet are bothering him. We can hear them banging around at the shelter. They're probably moving the construction boards so that they have a place to sleep. You¢d think that after 11 weeks on the trail, that we¢d have all our routines down pat, right? Hmm, afraid not. Brakeman and routines just do not mix. They are like oil and water. He has the total inability to follow routines. Every night it's one thing or another. Tonight, after we both worked on hanging the food bag, he puts his hand in his pocket and what does he pull out? Yep, a food baggie. Down comes the bear bag; in goes the food baggie. Up the food bag goes, again, with both of our efforts, as Grasshopper has to heave it up while Brakeman pulls on the rope. We then walked back to the campfire and what did we find? Yep, another food baggie with truffles in it. Down comes the food bag, again! It's actually quite funny. We just know that Brakeman and routines - they don't go along. We don¢t even have expectations for improvement by Katahdin!Today we saw pink Lady Slippers for the first time and we're also seeing a pink plant which Bare Fodder has told us is honeysuckle. We're not quite sure if that's right. Tonight, we're studying the Wild Flowers book that John mailed to us and trying to identify which ones we have already seen. Pretty neat little book with beautiful pictures. Believe it or not, we have finished Virginia and West Virginia and are now in Maryland! We're finding that mentally it is getting harder to hit the trail and get into the hiking groove after being in town. We talked about that issue today as we hiked. After 11 weeks on the trail, the degree of fun is not at the same height that it used to be. We now understand why some people say they go into countdown mode and begin to look forward to the end of the trip. We can see that happening, too. Our bodies are a little bit more worn out, our feet hurt a little bit more and the sense of adventure, of course, has decreased over the 11-week period. But we're still having a good time and enjoying a quiet evening at camp down at a little spring by ourselves.It's 7:50 and about 70 degrees. There's a nice coolness in the air so I think we're going to call it a night. We only have about 15 miles to do tomorrow so we're looking forward to another dry, relaxing day. Goodnight from Maryland.