Date: 2003-06-13
From: Ensign Cowall Memorial Shelter

To: Caledonia State Park
Miles today: 27.3
Weather: overcast clouds

27.3 miles from Ensign Cowall Shelter to Caledonia State Park on US 30 in PA. Today I crossed the PA/MD line¢¦..so I¢m now in PA. It was a long, long, long, long day. I got up a little late. Mainly because it had been raining overnight and I just didn¢t want to get out of the hammock. Also, because I knew today was gonna be bad. I was going to have to run 9 12 miles into Cascade and wait for my water filter to show up. So, I didn¢t feel like being in a big rush. A number of other people left before me. Red who had been jumping shelters by way of car left early also. Snort and Clover and Mud and Jug all left in a group. I left about 15-20 minutes behind them. I ended up passing Snort, Clover and Librarian. I ended up passing the three of those up in about 45 minutes or so. They had pulled over to the side there to smoke.   I kept right on going. Rocky road. Rocky road and muddy road. It¢s still muddy. I thought we were gonna leave the mud behind in Virginia but that hasn¢t been the case. We¢ve still got mud everywhere. At some point in the High Rock area (which is a view that you stood up on a rock and it was a sheer cliff downward) I walked to the blue blaze and it said 2/10 of a mile circle and I almost decided to skip but I said ¢You know what¢¦..screw it. That¢s part of the reason I¢m here is to see things¢. I went ahead and took the 2/10¢s of a mile detour to go see what High Rock was. High Rock ended up being an overview. There were three black guys (young guys) sitting up on the rock and about to leave and I asked them to take my picture. So, one of them did. They asked how long I had been hiking and I told them and they were pretty disbelieving. Anyway, I jumped back on the trail pretty quick after that and within 5 minutes I ran into Red. Right about that time I was realizing that I had left my rain jacket in the shelter back 8 miles or whatever and I was not about to go back and get it. I had a mission that day. The jacket¢s a hundred bucks but considering the severity of the climb that was involved (because it was a nasty morning¢¦a good long crawl going uphill) I was not about to do that twice and certainly not about to go back. So, I left a message with Red to tell anyone that came by that my jacket was in the shelter and I wrote a note in one of the registers in the shelter and hopefully I¢ll get it back. Probably not. But my name and address are written on it and my trail name is inside. Maybe someone is going to be nice enough to send it back instead of keeping it. I rolled into Cascade, MD at about 11:30 or a quarter to 12 and got my map and tried to figure out where I was going to. The trail came out right at Caladonia Park which was a nice little city park. I asked the attendant there for directions on how to get to the post office. There were a couple of machines there. I tried to get a coke but didn¢t have the proper change and no singles. I asked some of the bikers, that were there in a group, to give me change for a 5 and instead they just gave me a bunch of quarters to get a soda with which is very nice of them. I went down the path a little bit and there was Jug sitting there enjoying the sun. He was about to get off the trail for a couple of weeks. He¢s getting a job ¢¦I believe at the park that I¢m at now. Caladonia State Park for two or three weeks because that is how he has to pay for his journey. He has to work along the way. But he was sitting there and he was saying that he was waiting to use the phone. I went ahead and let him use mine to leave a message for the guy he was supposed to be working for. I said goodbye to him and hauled it to the post office. I stuck my thumb out and got a ride in about 10 minutes or so from a really nice lady who¢s going to Blue Ridge Summit which is a different town than the one I want to go to. She didn¢t understand me or we crossed connections¢¦and she started going to Blue Ridge Summit. I finally had to wave her down and tell her. She very nicely drove me back to the post office at Cascade and dropped me off there. I got my mail drops. My bump box, my mail, my regular mailbox and my water filter. I did a pretty complete gear change. I changed the backpack. I changed my shoes. I changed my gaiters. I wanted to try something new because the mud and the rain were getting to me and it was pretty miserable with the gear I had. The waterproof socks¢¦.I pulled them out and dried them out today. They worked out pretty well for the first 12 miles or so that I walked and I was very glad to have them because I walked through a lot of water and a lot of mud this evening. Then I left the post office. I managed to mail everything back before they closed for lunch at 1pm then I started walking down the road. I was really, really thinking that I just needed to take a zero day because I hadn¢t done my laundry in a long time and I was really smelling bad. I mean¢¦I could smell myself. I asked around and there was no motel around Cascade. The next town, which was Blue Ridge, had a laundromat but no hotel and I would have had to go down to Williamsport five miles down the mountain to get a hotel room, a shower and go do laundry and do whatever shopping as well. That was what I was leaning to. I was really tempted to. Just at the last moment I decided to go to Blue Ridge Summit instead. So, I ended up walking in the direction and very, very shortly I passed Tony¢s Pizza which was a strange looking Italian deli. I stopped in there and I had a veal parmesan dinner with a bit of spaghetti and a pretty good salad. They had tons of cheese on the salad and I had a large coke. Then I just got up and got moving pretty quickly out of there after I got done eating. I walked another couple of blocks and there was a bar so I stopped at the bar and had two Corona¢s and then got out of there. I started walking on towards Blue Ridge Summit. I had walked a good part of a mile trying unsuccessfully to hitch a ride when some guy finally picked me. He was nice enough to take me to J&J¢s laundry at Blue Ridge. The laundry was deserted. I was the only one in there for almost the whole time. I went ahead and threw my stuff in to get laundered. In the meantime I went to the bathroom (they had a large bathroom) and they had a large sink in there and gave myself a bath to get rid of some of the stink. That set the precedent as far as what I was gonna do. Looking back I was very glad that happened because I would have lost a lot of miles. I walked 18 miles after that¢¦that I would have not gotten in. I met a lady there at the laundromat and I talked to her for a few minutes. She was saying how the locals loved to help out the thru hikers and I told her how much we appreciated it. I had asked her where the closest drugstore was and she told me it was quite a ways away but she would go home and drop off her laundry and come back and take me there. She sensed that it was starting to rain and there was thunder and lightening when I was doing my laundry. She never did come back which is ok.   I finally got all my laundry done and I took the clothes I was intending to walk with and my hat and walked out into the rain. I walked down the street toward the AT. As if I hadn¢t had enough to eat a couple of hours earlier¢¦I went ahead and stopped at a diner and had a ribeye steak with mashed potatoes and creamy coleslaw. I went to the gas station and bought some cigarettes. They had a buy one get one free special on Winstons¢¦.which I got. I wanted to make sure I got cigarettes soon because I knew the prices were gonna go up to about $7.00 a pack as you head up north. So, I overstocked. I bought more than I ever bought in one place. I bought 6 packs. I bought 3 bagels and some chopped ham and one of those fancy tea¢s in the fancy bottles and walked out into the rain. This time it was rush hour traffic and it was pretty busy and nobody picked me up. I ended up walking all the way back to the trail head. 1.6 miles. Then I started walking north. About this time it was 5:00 in the evening and I was feeling really good. I had just eaten, I was in clean clothes, my pack was changed, my boots were dry (or at least they felt dry because I had waterproof socks on) and at that point I had resolved that I was going to walk all night. I was gonna go night hike. Walked past basically all the shelters. The Antietam Shelter was empty. Then I went through Tumbling Run Shelter and all the guys I knew were in there. At the Tumbling Runs Shelter everyone that I had started out with that morning was in there. Librarian, Snort, Clover, Mud, Jug, Bearbait. They were all packed in the same place. At this time it was a quarter to 8 and I stopped in to ask them if any one of them had picked up my jacket by any chance and none of them had. Then I offered (because I had way too much food. More food than I wanted to carry in my bump box) I offered it to anyone who wanted it. Snort and Clover said they were on a budget and they could use food. So I dumped my food bag out on the table and they picked through it. I gave them about half the food that I had. Then I packed up and told them I was gonna keep going to Caledonia State Park. A night hike. ..because it was a quarter to 8 at that time and it was 11 more miles. What a rough 11 miles that was. It was a very challenging hike in the day and an extremely challenging hike at night between the lovely, lovely pools of deep mud and numerous boulder fields in the dark. To top it all off a heavy fog had set in. So, it was quite a challenge to make the run there. All the way to a quarter to 12 that night is what it took me to get here. I¢m here right now at Caledonia State Park. Got in at a quarter to 12 and decided that I was just gonna take a chance and sack out in front of the state parks garage on the concrete under the overhang because it was extremely dewy and mud was everywhere. So, I rolled out my therma-rest and my sleeping bag and I tucked up under there and got all settled in about 12:15 or 12:30. I slept pretty good for the most part. I kept waking up but not for long. As I woke up the moon was coming up in front of me, then it was up high in the sky, then up higher in the sky and the next thing I knew it was getting light outside.