Date: 2015-05-11
From: Harpers Ferry

To: Rocky Run Shelter
Miles today: 15.4

I woke up at 5am, when the first alarms in the hostel went off. Then again at 6am, when I finally had enough light to see who I had shared a room with. There were a couple of familiar faces of people I had met at the ATC on Saturday.I eventually went to get breakfast after 7. The waffles were delicious again, and I took my time enjoying breakfast and packing up. I was trying to delay the inevitable. Another hiker, who has just finished his flip flop hike (he did half last spring and half this spring), was also trying to delay the inevitable. He said that it felt weird to be leaving the trail when everyone else is still hiking on. He said it almost made him want to keep hiking. I eventually left the town at 10am, and for once it wasn't immediately uphill. Instead, the first 3 miles follow the Canal Tow Trail, and it is completely flat. To my great disgust, the same hanging inchworms (which I am informed might actually be gypsy moth caterpillars) were still out in force. I wasted so much energy today constantly trying to wipe them or their webs off my skin. Even now I can hear them crackling in the grass around the shelter. There are too many bugs already, and the flying ones aren't even the problem yet. Right now I'm continually having to flick away giant fuzzy caterpillars off the picnic table. I have a very real fear that I will wake up tomorrow covered in them. The trail continued to be very nice, and it's easy to see why so many hikers would do the 4 state challenge here. The mountains have basically vanished. For the entire 15 miles today, there was only one short incline with switchbacks. The weather is also boiling again, though the morning started humid and overcast. I'm glad to have my new, very green, short sleeve tshirt. I reached the first shelter at 12.20 and stopped for lunch. A couple other section hikers were also there. I noted how weird it felt thinking about how yesterday at that time I was outside the Washington Monument. It's definitely not easy to come back to the trail. It is literally like walking away from the whole world, and losing all the comforts that come with it.After lunch, it was 9 more miles of slightly rocky trail. This was annoying because if there are rocks then I can't look ahead for the bugs, so I have the double trouble of walking into all the sticky, itchy webs and tripping over all the rocks. I managed to roll my right ankle once today particularly badly, and had to slow down for a little because of how much it hurt. It rectified itself eventually. Looking at it now, I can see a clear difference between my left and right ankles, even through my socks. It's not swollen though, so it must be the bone that is sticking out so strangely. This does explain why my right shoe did not fit properly around my ankle. Now, there is a new flip-flop hiker here at the shelter who is carrying a 50lbs bag. He is carrying 10 days of food, 3 changes of clothes, and a 5lbs backpack. It feels like I'm back at the start in Springer, and everyone is carrying a lot of ridiculous stuff again. Speaking of the shelter, there are actually two of them at Rocky Run. The older one is down by the spring and is in the small style I've been used to through Virginia- log walls with painted cement between the logs. The old one also has a swinging chair out the front, which I have never seen before on the trail. The new one is massive, with a loft and a porch over the picnic table. I'm opting to stay at the new one because of its proximity to the privy and because the porch is stopping all the bugs from dropping from the trees onto me.Tomorrow I'm planning to do about 20 miles. The trail looks good again for elevation, but I wish all the hanging caterpillars would just die already. They are seriously driving me crazy. Also today I passed from West Virginia into Maryland, and next up is Pennsylvania. Then I will have been in half of the 14 states that the trail goes through.