Date: 2015-11-30
From: Cove Mtn. Shelter

To: Half mile short of Alec Kennedy Shelter
Miles today: 25.0

Longest day yet! (with some extra besides). My goal: Alec Kennedy Shelter. That would be the 6th place I'd have stopped at on each one of my three 2000-mile hikes. Didn't happen. Little help from the moon, since it was another cloudy morning. So I packed & ate in the dark & made it up to the AT on the ridge before 6:00.   There were alternating rocks & easy spots, getting easier as I went down thru the valley between Second Mtn. & 1st Mtn. I was looking for the place l broke my hiking pole in 2013. My pack had fallen off a rock at a rest break & landed on it sideways. I guess I didn't start looking soon enough ¢ must have been the 1st easement South of the shelter, while I was very focused on rocks in the Trail.First day of the gun deer season [I had thought it was supposed to begin tomorrow]. As I hiked, I heard some gunshots & saw a few hunters plus a big tent off the Trail that might have had hunters. After going thru a farming area for a while, I went up again to stop at Darlington Shelter to eat. Several of the shelters recently have had a couple of bunks built in. It's interesting to see how they vary. Sometimes someone could sleep easily under the bottom bunk; others, that would be difficult. Some have no lip on the edge; so you could sleep in continual fear of falling off, given how easily sleeping bags & mattresses slide around (Allentown was like that). Cove Mtn had a very difficult ladder arrangement, where you had to turn 180o at the top, with not much to grab ahold of. Darlington had a much better design, with only a 90o turn plus a lip on the edge besides. I'm OK with diversity in designs, but there does seem to a lot of convergence of ideas in designing the newer shelters. Coming down the hill, I went under Rt. 994 (Another highway crossing made much safer since 2000) & began the 15-mile slog across the Cumberland Valley ¢ lots of farmland, some urban sprawl, & 3 major highways in one 2-mile stretch. I stopped to snack at the Scott Farm (owned by ATC), near where they were reconstructing a bridge but allowing hikers to cross the river. Actually, there is a lot of variety in this section if you want to see it. The Trail has avoided road-walks almost entirely except for bridges. Sometimes it's across open fields, either pasture or crop-land. Going thru a field where corn had been harvested, I saw 4 deer. They were safe this week because the antlerless hunt is next week. The walk along the river had sycamore, instead of the birches not so far North, plus box elders & some other scrubby trees. The fence rows even had some Osage Orange at one place, with lots of vines covering the shorter trees. At one place, I saw an 8-inch diameter hackberry with a 5-inch vine growing on it! How do they do that? Ash, cherry, & pin oaks were common, with a few hickories, plus a line of walnuts in the last few miles. I wondered how they affected the crops when growing at the edge of a field; they're not good for vegetable gardens. I even saw a grove of sugar maples, which haven't been common for a while. Well, that's about all I could identify from their bark & the leaves on the ground. No hunters on the flat land, but I did meet a number of joggers & dog-walkers. In the middle of one field, I met a kilted hiker with a backpack. He said he'd thru-hiked in 2013 ¢ starting & finishing before me, so I hadn't met him. He lives in the area & just couldn't stay off the Trail. As I got close to Boiling Springs, I miscalculated & disappointed myself. It took an hour longer than I'd thought, but I was still able to get to the Post Office before it closed. Just wanted to forward a package home ¢ I sure don't need any more food at this time in the hike. My pack has felt too heavy the whole time.After a good dinner at the Italian restaurant, I started off in the dark to do the 4 miles up to Alec Kennedy Shelter. The Trail isn't very well-marked as it takes a lot of twists & turns getting out of town. Both my flashlights were getting pretty dim, so I couldn't go very fast. Crossing the mile or so of farm fields South of town was actually easier because I could see where the Trail went except at road crossings, where I sometimes had to wait for a passing car to illuminate the blazes on poles. Then into the woods. That must have gone slower than I thought. When I got to a sign that said 3.2 miles back to Boiling Springs, I figured only another half mile to the shelter. After I'd gone another 34 or so, going over what I thought was the second hill, I walked back to the sign, thinking I must have missed the turn-off (the hills here aren't very high & I couldn't see the next hill in the dark, so it's difficult to tell which hill you are on). After going back a half mile, I decided I must have missed it & would have to camp. The fairly level place I chose turned out to be part of an unmarked side trail, so I followed that for 14 mile to see if it was the trail to the shelter (tho it was easier than my memory of the shelter trail). By then, the rain was increasing, my lights were fading, & it was 11:30 at night. So I set up as quickly as I could in a partly rocky spot & got to bed, quite tired after a long day. It's really a blessing to know that I can stop pretty much anywhere in the woods & make a reasonably comfortable camp, even in the dark & rain. Unfortunately I did lose a couple more tent pegs ¢ they are very thin wire, tricky to use & to hold onto ¢ now I'm down to 3 from the original 11! I had already acquired 3 stouter pegs to use for the places that take the most stress.