Date: 2018-04-29
From: ATC Headquarters 

To: Ed Garvey Shelter
Miles today: 7.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Thanks to all of the Flip Flop Festival volunteers. This was a major production with a cast of dozens, including a pancake breakfast this morning at Camp Hill Wesley Church. I¢ve offered to send down Vermont maple syrup for next year¢s festival! There was also bacon, bananas, orange juice and coffee. I¢m off coffee but really enjoyed the juice. I thanked one volunteer who had thru-hiked a couple of years ago. He lives in Waynesboro, PA and gave me his phone number if we need a ride to the hotel we¢ve reserved!  Then the FF class of 2018 walked up to ATC headquarters for a group photo and we were off. People scattered. Two caught a ride 10 miles north and slack-packed back to Harpers Ferry. Others took a shortcut through the cemetery to Jefferson Rock. Debbie and I and Willow followed the blue blazes through the Storer College Campus to the AT. Others are delaying their starts until Monday or Tuesday.  River will start Tuesday, and I hope she catches up to us. The view from Jefferson Rock of the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers is awesome in the sense of the word before it became overused. In town the princess trees were blooming. The pink blossoms are lovely but they are a major invasive species, introduced by ... Thomas Jefferson ... for whom the rock is named. Jefferson reportedly said that the view was worth a trip across the Atlantic. After walking between the bombed out shell of St. John¢s Episcopal Church and the still active St. Peter¢s Roman Catholic Church, the Trail crosses the Potomac on a walkway cantilevered from a railroad bridge and descends to the C&O Canal Towpath. Then starts several miles of level walking! We were passed by many bicyclists, one of whom intentionally jumped his bike into a puddle to splash Willow. Not nice. There was also a 100-mile running race along the towpath. We saw the stragglers, and they did not look happy. At a rest tent, we were offered water and bananas - we needed neither - and each of us was given two energy gels, each with 32 mg of caffeine! More magic. The trail finally leaves the towpath for the big climb of the day, up Weverton Cliffs, to a splendid viewpoint over the Potomac. We are catching the tail end of the raptor migration and saw eight hawks. We were joined by a group of about 10 African American hikers from Baltimore who will complete their three-day 25-mile hike from Maryland¢s Washington Monument to Harpers Ferry. They were thrilled to learn how easy the hike along the towpath is. The kids were wildly enthusiastic and are making plans for a 50-mile hike in October. We ate lunch at the cliff. I tried my Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter with Honey on a tortilla. Really excellent! For dessert, I inhaled my first Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pie of the hike. Oh the bliss! I loaded up one of my hip belt pockets with snacks this morning - freeze dried mango, dried mandarin orange slices, maple pork jerky, a bag of fruit, nuts and chocolate and a Lemon Luna Bar and have managed to eat most of it. A word about Willow. She¢s middle aged from Madison, Wisconsin with two grown sons who sound amazing. Her husband drove her down and attended the Flip Flop Festival with her. I am enjoying her company and the three of us have similar hiking speeds. Willow was upset this morning when she couldn¢t find one of her Dirty Girl Gaiters. She found it stuck inside her pants after breakfast! Don¢t they go great with Debbie¢s Crocs?The two miles from the cliffs to Ed Garvey Shelter passed quickly I am starting to remember how to hike on rocks again, just setting a line and following it. It¢s becoming automatic already.  It¢s chilly here in the 40¢s with a low of 37 forecast. We are tenting. Debbie had a true moment of panic and blaming her son when she couldn¢t find the fly for her tent. She had rolled it inside her sleeping pad. Debbie has also spent some time making adjustments to her pack. Debbie has no hips and the pack kept sliding down. She¢s shortened the torso length and it looks much better. This is a lovely two-story shelter and the water source is a gushing piped spring. The only trouble is that the spring is 1/2 mile steeply downhill. It really makes me appreciate running water at home. I hadn¢t used my Sawyer Squeeze Filter since last year and it took some backflushing to get it working properly. Always something on the first day. Half a bag of spinach and cheese tortellini and s Little Debbie for dessert and my tummy is full and happy. There¢s a total of about ten hikers here tonight. Most are Flip-flippers and all are nice. I will learn their names but there is The Beaver and No Peekee. There are stories behind those names but not rated for a general audience. We have been blessed with the magic of pancakes, the offer of a shuttle, caffeine bombs, the appearance of a missing gaiter that we thought had run off with a sock, great excited kids, the finding of the tent fly, and good company. A great first day. Then I received an email of good wishes from Collin¢s Dad making it even better. And tonight is a full moon, the pink moon, as April¢s full moon is called. What an auspicious beginning!