Date: 2007-10-09
From: Park Maintenance Rd in Caledonia State Park

To: Pavilion in Pen Mar
Miles today: 18.7

Tuesday, October 9, 2007Park Maintenance Rd in Caledonia State Park to beyond the pavilion in Pen Mar, 18.7 milesAwake at 5:30, pack up the repaired day pack, thank you Billy Goat. At 6:40 meet Sweet Sixteen and Mark in the campground. Sweet Sixteen and I drive to Caledonia, Sweet Sixteen sipping her beloved hot tea the whole way. At the park entrance we discover that the road to the parking area where the AT crosses is closed. Tomorrow a construction crew will be taking out the bridge. Park at the Park Office. Walk into park. Fooled in dim light mistaking yellow blazes for white. Pick up white-blazed AT at the pavilion. 7:20 we¢re off!Sweet Sixteen has left her poles at home. No matter. Even poleless, Sweet Sixteen hikes as strong and sure-footed as a jackrabbit. In places today¢s track is covered in yellow and brown beech leaves, whole plump ones, lightly stacked, blocking view of rock or ground underneath. Not to stray off trail we follow blazes and worn-off spots on rocks where boots have left their marks. But, due to leaf cover, we lack the additional cues of bootprints, crushed twigs/leaves, holes in soil or marks on rocks left by trekking-pole tips. Subtle cues we¢re not conscious we rely on until they¢re covered up. We lose the trail in a couple of spots. Also our pace slows as we determine what¢s under those leaves by touch, not sight.We stop for a drink. Wish it were as quick and easy to hydrate these crackling drought-ravaged woods as it is us. 9:05 brand new unmissable sign 0.3 to Rocky Mountain Shelter.10:00 interesting fungus. Back home I look it up. I think it¢s a Chicken Mushroom, AKA Sulfur Shelf, a polypore, Laetiporus sulphureus. Book says when young it¢s generally a choice edible, but it can cause allergic reaction in some people, and, depending on its tree host (eucalyptus, for example), upset stomach.Today¢s hike is a gabfest, as Sweet Sixteen and I catch up.11:30 we stop at a log bench and trailside register. Eat and drink. It¢s hot and humid, in the 80¢s I think. Except for the leaves on the ground and the lack of bugs, it feels like a summer¢s day. I¢m really really thirsty, paying for not hydrating before starting out. Finish my liter of gingerale.Noon we reach trail to Chimney Rocks. The midday light today is not at all harsh, it flatters everything in the woods, even us. It¢s as years-and-wrinkle-removing as candlelight.We walk through stands of slender-trunked rough-barked trees, leaves alternate, simple, somewhat beech-like but smooth-edged, fleshier, tougher, pinkish cherry-red/scarlet in color. (When I get home I look these up. Black gum, AKA Black tupelo.)Cell phone is dead, battery discharged. Last night I slept in the Element. No outlet to recharge it. There goes our plan to leave outgoing noontime message for Mark re our hiking progress. Sorry, Mark.12:50 we stop at twin Tumbling Run shelters, one labeled ¢Snoring¢ and one ¢Non-snoring¢. Immaculate place. Fire circles. Sturdy clotheslines in back of each shelter. Picnic table between the shelters.Hello to 2 sweating, panting weekend hikers. Can you ID the slender trees with the red leaves? I think those are spruce, says one. Maybe beech, says the other.On the path nearly every leaf in this area is riddled with circular "shot-holes" about 3/16-inch in diameter. (When I get home I look this up too. Leaf tissue, killed by bacteria or fungi, has fallen away.)2:30 I'm walking along, in no need of a privy. At Deer Lick Shelter, here's a privy, right beside the trail. It's a nice one, clean, neutral-smelling. As I walk by it, what? Sudden overwhelming need for a privy, effect of that strange force, the power of suggestion.Drinking the last of a bottle of chocolate milk, I hydrate and recharge depleted energy stores.Until we meet up with Mark, I'm out of water/liquids.3:40 at Mentzer Rd, hello to Mark, an easy smile on his face. Chilled water and apples! Wash water to splash over hot salty sweaty faces, necks and hands. Mark, thank you! While we¢ve been walking, he¢s had a good day touring Gettysburg, sharing the story with us. From here, it¢s only 2-3 miles to the end of our hike, Pen Mar. Mark will meet us there near the pavilion.4:45 cross Old Rte 16. A motorcyclist stands by the fence, bike parked a little ways up the hill. Are you broken down? No just stretching my legs.Although plenty of leaves are wafting, spiraling, hiccuping down today, neither of us catches one. I have a near-catch, more accurately, a near-entrapment, but that¢s it.Because its cross-piece is missing, we almost miss the sign that marks the Mason-Dixon line. A bit of trail gossip: Sweet Sixteen says she¢s heard that a hiker, whose trailname begins with ¢P¢, periodically hikes north to just beyond the sign, fouls the trail on the Pennsylvania side, turns around, and hikes back south.As I've been walking towards the Mason Dixon line, rudiments of a thrilling idea have entered my head. I think, I think I¢m on the verge of making the AT record book! Striding over the Mason-Dixon line, I finish hiking the AT in PA.Just behind the park building in Pen Mar, I finish hiking the AT in MD. Yup, in a tad under 7 minutes, I finish hiking the AT in 2 states!!! Woo-hoo! I'm considering myself an AT record-holder until somebody tells me otherwise. :- )))Out at 5:30, probably 9 hours of actual walking. Goodbye 18-mile gap. Mark is waiting for us at one of the picnic tables in the park. He takes me back to the Element. Goodbye Sweet Sixteen and Mark, enjoy biking the C and O. I head back to the Ironmasters Mansion to retrieve something a friend left behind there. On the way the sky opens and the rains come. Goodbyes to Donna, Maw and Paw, Red Wolf and Crazy Horse. I start out for Syracuse.Will there be more AT hiking this year? I¢d love to finish CT and the rest of NY. If there¢s time before this winter¢s southern adventure.