Date: 2021-05-27
From: Ensign Cowall Shelter

To: MD - PA border
Miles today: 9.8
Weather: broken clouds

Last day of Maryland! We started early, since we were aiming to get to Pen Mar park by 5 to meet my dad and Pepper. The weather was much nicer, still a little hot, but sunny and no rain predicted. We¢d heard good things about the trail ahead from some southbound hikers the night before, and it kept us in good spirits, hoping today would be the best day of the trip. We set off after breakfast and started with a climb. There were some amazing views, and at the first viewpoint, we saw the first snake of the trip (yikes), it was just soaking up the sun on a rock, which I could understand, so we just avoided it and went to see the view (although I wasn¢t a fan of when we turned to go back down the rocks and it was gone). Since it was hot, I was drinking lots of water, which is obviously good to stay hydrated...not so good when I suggested we passed the first 3 springs we came to because they were all right before big uphills and I didn¢t want to carry the extra weight. Needless to say, after drinking my 2.5L of water in the first 2 or 3 hours, I ran out, and of course we had now passed all of the water sources for the day. I¢ll file that under oopsie, and say lesson learned: don¢t pass up springs on a hot day. All of the views today were amazing. We went from rocky overlooks to open meadows to peaceful streams. The sun was shining and there was a nice breeze. We met our first ridge runner along the way, he works for the ATC, which I think would be a pretty cool job to have. The second big climb of the day came before we were planning to stop for lunch, so there was motivation to get it over with, and once we got to the top, we were rewarded with having lunch at High Rock, where we could see out for miles. The descent from High Rock was the one we¢d been warned about as being difficult and rocky, and it didn¢t disappoint in either of those categories. It was the first time we really had to search for trail blazes multiple times, since we were going through rock fields and going over and around big boulders. It seemed like it lasted forever, but eventually we made it to the bottom and the trail evened out some. We had another short uphill and downhill before we would be free on a flat section to the park. On that flat section, we saw dad¢s blue shirt and big grin, telling us that we were only 10 minutes from the park. Pepper didn¢t recognize us at first, but once she smelled us and remembered who we were (not sure how she did that when we smelled so bad haha) she was back to her usual enthusiastic (aka jumping and teething) self. We walked with them back to the park, took some pictures with the sign, put our packs in the car, and walked the last few tenths of a mile to the MD - PA border. This is the first state I¢ve completed in one trip, but I know there¢s more to come. I¢m glad we ended on this good day, since it reminds me why I¢m here. It may be hard to be without friends, family, and pets, but on days like today, it makes it all worth it. I¢m going to take a few days off in a hotel to let my feet rest and let my blisters heal some, but I¢ll check in the next time I have some updates. Our word of the day: redemption.