Date: 2005-06-10
From: Pine Knob Shelter

To: Old Forge Picnic Area
Miles today: 25.1

10:45I already have about 10 miles in. I stopped at Ensign Cowall Shelter to cook some ramen noodles with chicken and pork mixed in. I was very hungry this morning. I ran pretty fast to try to get there and eat. I'm basically out of water, and I'm carrying Easy Goer's filter right now; there's supposed to be a spring 3 miles north of here. My water filter has taken a dump, I really can't get water if I'm by myself. That's the way it goes. It rained last night, off and on all night. This morning all the trees were wet as we were walking though the woods. With the breeze blowing, it was hard to tell if it was raining of if the wind was knocking the water off of the trees.You can certainly feel civilization pressing in closer and closer, ever more now than in Shenandoah. There are more section hikers, day hikers, and people walking through the woods. I'm expecting that this weekend will be the first major onslaught of the Boy Scouts. We are getting closer to Washington, D.C. and the schools are out for summer now. Even without that, right now, I'm walking on a long stretch through a farmer's field, you can see houses on one side down the hill and I'm crossing lots of roads. You can hear cars driving by.It has been an overcast day, which is good, it keeps the temperature down, although the humidity is still at 100%. It's about 75 or so. It has made it a little more pleasant the last couple of days to walk. The bugs are definitely getting ferocious. There is one specific kind of bee that just drives me nuts! They follow you for miles. They just buzz around your head, and they pick a certain spot that they want to land on, like my left ear, and every few seconds he tries to land on my ear and I swat him away and try to run away, and the faster I walk, the faster he flew! He flew around my head until I finally put my bandana on. It turns out that OC1's friend, Mike Smith, is picking us up again tomorrow night. We will be staying at his house, which is great!When I run into the guys again we are going to have to talk, we were going to stop at Rocky's Pizza and eat tonight, but it might be better just to just run. We can spend the extra hour and a half we would spend there and get a few extra miles. Mike can pick us up a little earlier. I'm going to present that opinion to them later. It has been an interesting day. It was a good walk. Maryland has alot of nice, wide, flat scenic trails. They also have plenty of shocking bumps and climbs with some rough walks and boulder fields. Especially north of the High Rock Overlook. We went over to High Rock and sat there for a while. From what I understand, it overlooks about 20 counties in Maryland. At about 1 o'clock, I pulled out my cell phone and called Rocky's Pizza, which is close to the Pen Mar Park. We ordered 3 12 inch pizzas: 2 with pineapple, 1 with anchovies and garlic, 20 hot chicken wings, a 2 liter bottle of Coke and a 24 ounce bottle of Coke. We told them to deliver it by 2:30. That gave us an hour and a half to run the 3 miles down through all the rocks. On the way down, I had my NEXTEL on and my boss Tony called me. He's in Las Vegas playing in the World Championships of Poker. We talked for a while. We got into Pen Mar Park and we called the pizza place again and he said they would be there in 10 minutes. When he got there, we sat at a picnic table and pigged out on all the food. While we were sitting there, 2 guys walked up and asked where the AT was. It turned out to be 2 reporters from Mouth's hometown. They had come down to cover his hike, specifically because he was doing the 4 State Challenge today. What the 4 State Challenge is, is right at the border before Harper's Ferry is the Virginia state line, they have to walk through 4 states in a 24 hour period. These 2 guys had walked the first 25 miles with Mouth starting at 2 am and gave up at that point. They figured Mouth would be walking through that point at about 6 o'clock. All the luck to him!! I think it's insane, but good luck.I talked these guys into giving me a ride 1/2 mile down to the bar to buy 2 packs of Marlboros. Albert, Vern and I finally packed up again and took off out of Pen Mar State Park at 4 o'clock and walked for several hours more. We bypassed Deer Lick Shelters, we wanted to get a couple of extra miles in and we did. We got to the Antieam Shelter at 6pm and it was totally packed with tents all around it. Just a tenth of a mile after that is the Old Forge Picnic area, where we could get water and they have bathrooms there. OC1 went to the front and read the park regulations and it said that you could camp there if you were using 'primitive camping equipment' such as tents, and not using their facilities. We went ahead and waited until dark and set up our tents on the ballfield. It's a pretty nice place, it has a pump house, which we were welcomed to use. It has pavillions and cabins. I made some hot chocolate with Sanka, one of my favorite drinks right now, it's like dessert.I watched with amusement as the guys hung their food bags on the chain link fence. I'm pretty certain that the cats and raccoons will get their food before dawn. It's OK if that happens because we don't really need any food for the next 2 days. Tomorrow nigh, Mike Smith is taking us over to his house to shower, eat and do laundry. The following day, we should be getting to OC1's house. At about 9 o'clock a camp ranger showed up, after we were all settled and told us we could not camp there. We sat there and talked for a bit, he was very nice. He called his boss and they made an exception for us and let us camp there. So here we are.Good night.