Date: 2017-08-19
From: Sheet Iron Roof Road

To: Shippensburg Road
Miles today: 19.4
Weather: broken clouds

I am sitting on the porch of Pine Grove Furnace State Park General Store. This is a big deal. This site, next to endpoints Katahdin and Springer Mountain, easily ranks as one of the five best-known places on the AT. It¢s fabled. Hikers get bragging rights for what they do here. Or don¢t do here. At Mt. Washington¢s cog railway, hikers moon the train. At Virginia¢s James River Bridge hikers (a few) jump off the 700-foot-long span. Both these activities are illegal and the second one highly illegal. And don¢t forget Hike Naked Day. Nature Boy can¢t. He engaged in the activity back in Maine, and later that day, no longer au natural, a woman commented, because earlier she had not been looking at his face, ¢Oh right, you were that nature boy.¢ I didn¢t moon the cog railway. I do not intend to jump off a bridge. And with the black flies in Maine I would have been crazy to bare my skin. But here at mile 1087.5, I have reached the site of The Half Gallon Ice Cream Challenge. Eat it all in a single sitting. Do it and your award is a tiny wooden spoon. I don¢t hesitate. I walk right in and order ¢¦. ¢A hamburger and fries.¢ No. Nyet, Nein, Nada. But when I walk out the door and onto the trail I¢m carrying a two-scoop, hand-dipped ice cream cone. This is my challenge¢in the wilting heat keep that sticky, melting goodness from making a gooey mess. Scout¢s own ice cream challenge. Take a look at these three photos. The first is how happy this hiker is with her ice cream challenge, the second is me holding up one of those half gallon tubs (Frodo: Have you noticed that the containers you THINK hold a half gallon of ice cream actually hold only three pints, or 3/4 of a half gallon?  Yeah, the ice cream companies hope you haven't noticed that!)  and the third is how happy I am with my own ice cream challenge.  http://www.trailjournals.com/j... http://www.trailjournals.com/j... http://www.trailjournals.com/j... In seven miles I will pass another site that should be up there on the AT top-five list. The AT mid-point. How can its name not be right up there with Katahdin and Springer? Well, how about because it keeps jumping around. The trail¢s length keeps changing. There is actually a sketchy, temporary mid-point marker on a post that the AT Museum folks move as necessary. A beautiful, mid-point monument does exist and I came to it at mile 1091. It has gravitas, it has stature, but any emotion you feel there is based on a lie, any photos taken there are empty of the meaning. Here I am at the first monument. I wonder how many southbounders get there and think they are at the real thing¢only to find out three miles later that the cigars they smoked, the whisky they drank, was consumed too early.  Frodo Lives! And better yet, she¢s here, not in San Diego, that fabled place where rumor has it I still have a home, and a waterbed. Yep, we still sleep in one after all these years. That waterbed is one of the reasons she fell in love with me, so I¢m not getting rid of it. Frodo is slackpacking me today, and it¢s a double-positive whammy, as not only am I hiking with an ultra-ultralite pack but the trail is pretty darn nice for all of today¢s 19-plus miles. Mid-morning, she met me at a road and I stepped out of the woods to wait for her. I am standing at the Appalachian Trail Road sign, that has to be right, isn¢t it? (See photo at top of entry). But she is parked 200 yards down the road, in the official AT trailhead parking lot. Exactly where she said she¢d be. Oops. At least I wasn¢t hiking down the trail in the wrong direction.  (Frodo: THIS time!) Mid-day I entered Pine Grove Furnace State Park, the site of an early American iron forge. It¢s a luxury of riches. Hmmmm, there¢s a white sand beach, swimming area, lifeguards, snack bar and showers, fields of cut grass to sit on, there¢s the Appalachian Trail Museum and, of course, the General Store and its big ice cream challenge. I met Frodo at the General Store. We had lunch and then strolled over to the Museum. I so hope someday the PCT has a museum like this. I personally have or have access to trail history artifacts just as dear and moving¢ the1959 Mulford Trail Ride original movie camera, 1954 Boy Scout PCT relay original uniforms, and original photos and items from the 1930¢s YMCA PCT Relay. May it be so someday. In the meantime here are two photos, me before a display of AT icon Avery¢s trail tools from the 1930s and of the original Katahdin sign that was replaced with a new one in 2010.  http://www.trailjournals.com/j...  and  http://www.trailjournals.com/j... Of all things, Continental Divide Trai icon Jim Wolf has his photo up on a museum wall. It¢s a group shot titled ¢Pioneer Long Distance Hikers.¢ And there in the first row of the sixteen AT early ¢end-to-enders¢ kneels Jim Wolf, CDT guidebook author and founder of the CDT Society.  http://www.trailjournals.com/j...  and http://www.trailjournals.com/j...At the end of the day, Frodo hiked in a mile to meet me. I emerged at a gravel road trailhead and knew this was the Appalachian Trail half-way point. I think back to the start of my hike, that first day with Rolling Thunder, getting stuck in a mud bog up to my thigh, the first tick on my body that night, and it all seems so long ago. I had no idea what lay in store for me, I had no idea who I would meet, become close to, and now I am here. I knew tears would well up. I hugged Frodo and unabashedly cried on her shoulder. Thru-hikers focus on how far we have come, not how far we have to go. And I made a short video. On the day of our 30th wedding anniversary, ten years ago, we crested the PCT high point, Forester Pass, more than 11,000-feet higher than the AT mid-point, and there at that moment we renewed our vows. I added one to those I had made 30 years before. I promised, ¢To amuse her.¢ I think this video that she took, is one more step on that path. http://www.trailjournals.com/j...Now on to two zero days¢I need it after hiking 18 full days out of the last 19. Now to go into D.C. and see our daughter Jordie¢s new house for the first time. I will leave you with a photo of the three of us at dinner. And, before you ask, I don¢t how long I am keeping the goatee.  http://www.trailjournals.com/j...Very tired, Scout