Date: 2017-08-28
From: Fayetteville, PA

To: Raven Rock shelter
Miles today: 22.7
Weather: broken clouds

I¢m done with these Yankees. I want all y¢all to know I¢m now officially in the South.That was the effect of crossing the Mason-Dixon line, which was the arbitrary historical boundary between the north and the south. On the ground it didn¢t mean much -- what was I expecting? Banjos?But in the grander scheme of things, it¢s yet more proof that there is actually an end in sight ¢ just -- for this grand adventure on the AT.And like a lot of things pertaining to the eastern US, this was something about which I knew very little ¢ to the extent that it was only when I googled the history of this boundary that I discovered it wasn¢t actually the ¢Mason-Dixie¢ line, as I¢d thought for the best of half a century!I¢m guessing I just wasn¢t having a very sharp day. For days, I¢d known that right on the Maryland border was Penmar Park and pondered on whether the origin of the name was Welsh, since Pen is a familiar suffix that means the top of something. Penmar Park is a prominent viewpoint which was once one of the most popular resorts in the eastern US, attracting up to 20,000 people a day, so ¢pen¢ could well have been an apt moniker. It was only when I arrived that it finally dawned on me that it was simply a portmanteau made up of the first three letters respectively of Pennsylvania and Maryland... ¢It¢s probably good that I¢m not operating heavy machinery at present,¢ I muttered to myself and continued to hike southwards.It helped that today was not a day that required much mental agility. As it has done for weeks, the AT followed long flat forested and mostly viewless ridgetops that were what were left of the 500 million year old Appalachian mountains. These mountains were once as big as the Rockies but such are the vicissitudes of life and/or erosion that now they get no higher than 2000ft for hundreds of miles.From the Trail of Hope hostel, I went back to the diner for a suitably hearty breakfast and then headed back into the hills. I always hike better with town food in my stomach and this food fuelled me for the first 10 miles of the day.This took me to yet another excellent shelter that had been showered with benevolence and effort from one family, which had been maintaining it since the the 1990s. There were lots of things to like about it but none more than the signs on the two separate shelters, which read ¢Snoring¢ and ¢Non-snoring¢.Then it was back into the long green tunnel again for the rest of the way to the Maryland border, which I reached in late afternoon.My erstwhile hiking buddy Train hailed from Maryland and had hiked all 44 miles of the AT in the state, saying several times while we were traversing the rocks of northern Pennsylvania that the Maryland section was much nicer.So it was something of a shock when the trail continued on the southern side of Penmar Park as it had been north side of the border, which is to say the AT standard of rocky and rough, even if it was not as bad as the worst bits of Rocksylvania.But I only had a few more miles to do to get to Raven Rock shelter, my destination for the night. The only person present was a grey-haired woman, who was a sobo section hiker from Washington DC. Shortly after I arrived, Juicy Fruit and Suches walked up ¢ as was becoming a frequent occurrence, I¢d thought they were way ahead of me only to find they were behind. Even if the trail was not an improvement, the quality of the shelters in Maryland certainly improved. This was a big, new double-decker shelter with an expansive covered area in front and bear cables nearby for hanging our food.Life is good.AT fact of the day: The woman at the shelter turned out to be a former peace corps volunteer who went on to work for USAid, the foreign aid branch of the US government. She proved to be good company, particularly once we worked out that we¢d both been to some fairly obscure locations, such as Somalia. She seemed a little shocked that I¢d gone there on holiday compared to her own experience of having a squad of armed guards with her at all times.