Date: 2005-06-08
From: Mark Z's house (near the David Lesser Shelter)

To: C&O Canal Towpath (east junction)
Miles today: 13.3

We are walking out of Harper's Ferry. We are on the C&O Canal Towpath.   The guys are about 300 yards ahead of me. We had a great day today.We walked into Harper's Ferry at about 12 o'clock. We went up to ATC Headquarters first, signed in and got our pictures taken. Then we got our mail drops. Mine was ridiculous. I had not only my bump box, which is huge, but 5 other boxes. I had a total of 6 boxes. I had missed my maildrop at Linden, I had ordered some chicken from Mountain House, and Eddie sent me some stuff. It started getting a little complicated for me to get everything together.   We sat there for a couple of hours and looked at a couple of years worth of books and took pictures of them. We resupplied. I had way too much food and so does OC1. Albert picked through the stuff and took some. Now we all have too much food.We ran down to the Outfitters, looked around and got some stuff. Most of the stuff we got, we put in the bump box to be sent to OC1's house. Albert hung out at the ATC headquarters while OC1 and I mailed our things back.We stopped at this one place to get some pork barbeque and ice cream. We walked back to the Trail and all the way around and back into town again. We sat at the Armory Pub and had a couple of beers and some pretty decent food.At about 5:30 we walked out of town across the bridge. There are tourists here taking pictures of us. It's pretty funny how people get excited seeing through hikers. I'm going to start charging them $5 a piece to take my picture, or at least attempt to, like they do in Jamaica and Puerto Rico!!We don't know what we are doing tonight. We would like to camp along the C&O Canal Towpath, that's probably not going to happen because it's against the law. Vern says there's a house here he knows is deserted, we might be able to cowboy camp on the porch there. There's also the possibility of a hostel. At any rate, his friend is coming to pick us up in the morning to take us to breakfast at Cracker Barrel. The food situation is just crazy! We had an awesome breakfast this morning at Mark Z's house. We had lunch and dinner at Harper's Ferry. We are having breakfast at Cracker Barrel. We are packing way too much food, and as insane as this sounds, we are all losing an alarming amount of weight. I weighed myself at Mark's house and at the accurate scale at the ATC Headquarters, and I have lost no less than 22 pounds. It takes 3,500 burned calories to lose 1 pound. I have lost almost 25 pounds, more than anyone else. That comes out to a 1,750 calorie deficit per day. At this rate, I'll get to Katahdin weighing 76 pounds!To make up for that, I have had ice cream 3 times so far, and before they were closing, I picked up a 32 ounce strawberry malt and walked across the bridge with it. I drank the whole thing and now I feel like a big, fat pig. But I don't care, it's a wonderful feeling. I don't care if I sleep in the river tonight.Life is good. The sun is still shining while we cross this really cool bridge. It's a very scenic walk along the river.   We decided not to do the steep uphill to the Ed Garvey Shelter this late at night, especially after all we had eaten. I definitely have to work on getting my calorie count up. You're not supposed to camp anywhere near the C&O Canal Towpath or the Potomac River, but there was a trail leading down to the river, right where the AT meets the Towpath. It seems highly unlikely that a Ranger would be walking there in the middle of the night searching for tents. So, we went ahead and took the risk. We are camped right on the shore of the Potomac River. It's very nice, the water is running by. It's hard to tell, but it looks like it's going to be a nice night. The stars are out and I can see Venus clearly. The bugs are out, I'm stratching like crazy and it's pissing me off because I'm wearing all this expensive clothing called Buzz-Off that's supposed to keep the bugs away from you. Vern and Albert are sitting on the shore in shorts and T shirts, and here I am in long pants and clothes that are supposed to protect me and I'm getting all bitten up.   That's another story.It's nice to be next to the river and hear the water running by. Tomorrow should be an interesting day. The reason we are camped out here is because one of OC1's friends, Mike Smith, is picking us up in the morning to take us to breakfast at Cracker Barrel. We still have too much food. We sat here tonight trying to figure out how to lighten the load. Mike Smith will take anything we want back to OC1's house, which is less than 100 miles away.I'm tired, good night.