Date: 2003-06-12
From: Ed Garvey Shelter

To: Ensign Cowall Memorial Shelter
Miles today: 25.0
Weather: clear sky

From the Ed Garvey Shelter to the Ensign Cowall Memorial Shelter. 25 plus miles. 25 and a couple of tenths. Who cares any more, it was a lonnnggg way. I woke up very early. I was the first one to wake up in the shelter about 5:30 and the first one out. I woke up early because I actually felt good in terms of not being tired. Climbed a steep ascent yesterday out of Harper¢s Ferry after hangin' out with Mud and Jug and Kelly. I guess I managed to screw up a couple of things on that climb and I woke up with a very sore back and my right knee and my left ankle are both swollen. Other than that I feel wonderful. I¢ve got somewhere over¢¦I don¢t know maybe 11 ¢12 miles in today as I talk into my digital voice recorder right now . At some point early on I came upon Twofiddy who was sitting at one of the overlooks and he ended up hiking behind me for about an hour at a really fast clip. He was very persistent about latching on, talking non-stop so I put my earbuds on, metallica playing max volume and tried like hell to outrun him. We got to one of the shelters and we signed in, came back out and started running again. Ended up running into Mud who had passed by us back at the shelter. So, we all hiked off together in a group for awhile until we got to the Backpackers Campground. Mud ran and jumped in the shower. Twofiddy came up behind us after a bit and I met Snort and Clover for the first time, two gals from Canada hiking together. We chatted and I took off because I knew that there was a tavern coming up with beer and junk food. Snort caught up to me after a few minutes and we hiked hard. She had beer on her mind too. I wore her out somewhere trail-running the long downhill and she dropped off the pace. I¢m on target today, trying to do 25...we¢ll see what happens. A very long and very interesting day. We did get down to the bar, the Dogpatch Tavern. It turned out to be a biker bar. Actually everyone on the trail knows it as the Hiker-Biker Trash Bar. It¢s one of those places where¢¦..Mud and I walked in together and the music stopped. Just like in Animal House. The people stopped talking and everyone turned around to stare at us. It was a Twilight Zone moment. But we sat down at the bar anyway and I ordered a Long Island Iced Tea because I could and a BBQ beef plate and a big order of french fries, and Mud ordered a cheeseburger. We sat there for awhile and I had another Long Island Iced Tea. The two girls (Snort and Clover) walked in shortly after. We moved over to a table and sat there and talked for awhile. We had some more food and some more beer and some more food and some more beer. I ordered taquitos and then I ordered a second plate and passed it around. We had been sitting there awhile and Twofiddy showed up shortly after. He sat in the booth behind us and we sat there and yapped for about 2 hours. 3:30 and it was time to get rolling. We paid the lady and got out pretty fast. As we were leaving Snort (she is a VERY DAMN good-looking girl) bent over to pick up her pack and I guess more of her buttcrack showed than she wanted to. One of the biker dudes got all excited and verbally graphic so we got the hell out of there as fast as possible. The hike up was, of course, a hike uphill and it kind of sucked. Slugging down 6,000 greasy calories as fast as possible always makes me sleepy. I started hiking with Mud and then I slowed down to digest and he took off. Twofiddy caught up with me and we ended up stopping at High Rocks overlook as a lightning storm moved in rapidly. I took a picture of the storm, it was pretty awesome. Hopefully the pictures will turn out awesome too. We watched this thunderstorm roll in from one high place to another and of course that meant that the thunderstorm rolled in on us. We barely were off High Rocks before it started booming and raining. I rushed to get my gaiters on and cover up the backpack and get my raincoat out. Twofiddy just took his shirt off and started crowing and dancing like a cannibal at a birthday dinner. It¢s been hot days the last two days¢¦in the high 70¢s and low 80¢s which is my kind of weather. It¢s hot for other people. So, it was a good, long, hard hike. I believe it was 8 miles to the shelter that Mud was going to and apparently everyone else was going to because when I got here at about 6:30 (that was pretty good time ¢ 3 hours for 8 miles) it was already packed. Weird Al was of course already there, having yellow-blazed from the tavern with his rabid shelter-hogging dog from hell. A trail angel had left a whole bunch of beer in the creek..in a spring for with a note for the thru-hikers but the overnight hikers staying in the shelter had already drank most of it and were very pleased with themselves. Regardless, in the register it said that this shelter was 12 mile from the road and listed a number to order pizza that delivered at the road crossing. So that¢s what we did. We ended up ordering 5 pizzas and munching out on them. But the shelter is extremely overcrowded, mainly because the rain had driven everybody in. There was no way I was gonna stay in that crowd, so I went ahead and set up my hammock. That¢s where I am now. goodnight.