Date: 2006-06-25
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

Yeaahaw half way. What does that mean? One way to look at it is that all the pain, suffering, hard time, extreme heat and cold, bugs, snakes, crazy people, everything I own being wet for longer than a week, stubbing toes, blisters, and anything else unpleasant that I have encountered will more than likely happen again. Or you can look at it in a positive way all the joyous things will happen too. Beautiful vistas, sunsets, trail magic and all sorts of great things.After waking up to a slight drizzle I started hiking. The drizzle was nice cause it kept you cool and I was not sweating through my clothes. After a while I heard a good size thunder then it started pouring and didn¢t stop. The great thing is the trail was relatively flat. The bad thing is the water had no where to go so it was like walking through an ankle deep lake all day. Everything I have is now soaked. I was trying to get to Pine Grove Furnace State Park before the camp store closed. At the camp store is a Thru-hiker tradition called "the half gallon challenge". It is where you are supposed to buy a half gallon of ice cream then eat it all in one sitting. I wanted to give it a shot the only problem is that I didn¢t know what time the camp store closed. If I didn¢t make it there before the store closed then I would have to try it in the morning. The rain kept falling harder and harder and I finally made it there about 30 minutes before it closed. I was soaking wet and was debating trying it but figured I better try. I chose mint chocolate chip and dug in. Right after I took the first bite I ran to my bag and started digging for my rain coat. Not because it was raining but because I was cold. That¢s weird I walked all day in the rain and had to put on my rain coat cause I was cold. I ate most of the ice cream then my conscience kicked in. I read the register of everyone who had tried it and it said that they felt like dying or throwing up. When I had about half a fist left I realized that I would thank myself later if I pulled out.   I decided that I should just throw in the towel and get warm. I headed over to the hostel and got a shower. The hostel is an old mansion that had a trap door under the floor in the closet that led to a secret room that was used during the Civil War.Before bed we watched a documentary on the Appalachian Trail from 1983. Let¢s just say some of the trees are the same as back then but its a different trail now. We made fun of the gear that they used since technology has given us advancements on lighter gear. Everyone was throwing in wise cracks about experiences they went through on the trail in those certain spots. When the film was ending and they showed the hikers climbing Katahdin Mountain at the end of their journey the room got silent. When anyone watches the film they get the feeling of what it is like emotionally to reach Katahdin from what they saw earlier in the film. For those of us in the room we had a better feeling then others since we had been through half of what the film showed. Everyone realized that we were half way done. But others of us realized that we only had half way till our adventure was over.