Date: 2006-06-23
From: Bears Den Hostel

To: Mile mark 1004
Miles today: 15.7

The stay at the hostel was nice. We had a greatbreakfast compliments of the Hostel proprietor QueenDiva. After more resting and packing I got on thetrail by 11:00. The humidity and temperature wereconsiderably more tolerable today. My goal wasoriginally an 11 mile day to a shelter, then to have 9miles into Harper's Ferry the next day. The planchanged after I and my fellow hiker buddies,Handlebar, Johnny K, and Spitball learned there was acampspot just about 5 miles short of town. We set offfor this destination. The only problem was our latestart. The trail still had rocky terrain, but not thecontinual up and down of yesterday. We stopped for a30 minute break at another hostel along the trail. Wegot back to the trail about 3:00 pm. At 6:00 we arrived at a road crossing tha had a nearbyconvenience store and bar and grill. We decided to takea dinner break. We went to the little bar. It was fullof locals on a Friday night. The people were friendly,and the pizza was great. The problem was poor service.they were understaffed so it was near 7:00 by the timewe got to eat, then 8:00 before we got ready to leave.We spoke with a guy outside the bar that said therewas a weather watch out for thunderstorms thisevening. That seemed strange as the day had beenpleasant. Not real hot or windy and it was only partlycloudy. The barometor on my watch preddicted sunnyskies. Anyway we got started on the trail by 8:30 or so, andhad we thought about a mile and a half. The trail wasvery nice and smooth. Talk came up about just doingthe entire mileage into town. Not far into the walk wefound a campspot. It came up quicker than we expected.Spitball wanted to go all the way into town. I toowanted to at least go farther if not all the way in. Ineeded to get to the post office Saturday morningbefore it closed at noon so moving on was good for me.Johnny K was ok to move on to the original site wewere looking for. Handlebar the wiseman wanted to stopfor the night. It was almost dark. The vote was inand we moved on. It was time for headlamps but weopted to let our eyes adjust to the darkness. Icould see the rocks that had now returned to the trail.Each step had to be planned now. Still the idea topress on seemed like the best plan.It had been about 15 minutes after we left the firstcampspot we had found. About the time it would take toset up a tent and do camp chores. There were noforewarning. No wind, no temp change, no sprinkles. Itjust rained, hard! We were drenched in seconds. Wescrambled to get our pack covers on. We continued onat at quicker pace, now dodging the wet rocks in thedark. Now Handlebar's vote to stop back at thecampspot seemed so wise. To add too "excitement"of the evening it sooned seemed that we had passed theintended campspot in the dark. Now we were unsure ifthere were any other campspots to be found in the next5 miles before town. So now it looked like we werecommitted to a 5 mile walk in the dark, in the rain,on rocky, rocky terrain. We pressed on mostly laughing at our circumstances. Atleast we had already eaten. All we had to do was walkfor at least 2 more hours and then hope to find aplace to sleep when we arrived at around midnight orso. Well we finally had some luck after another half hourof walking and found a spot where we could fit 4tents. Our luck increased when the rain eased upenough for us to set up and get in our tentsreasonably dry considering what we had already beenthru. By 10:30 it was lights out. Damp but notunbearable. Clay