Elkton, MD, to Northeast, MD
section miles: 11.5 total miles: 27.5
At long last we have maps in hand, and had decent enough weather to head out again, leaving Meadow Park in Elkton around 10:00 am and arriving in Northeast, MD around 4:00 pm. I'm not sure where the time went, but averaging less than two miles an hour? It must be all the photo and snack breaks coupled with all the back-tracking to find the trail, because we are most assuredly hiking at a brisk pace when we're on the move. Perhaps our mileage estimates are wrong, but we take those directly from the MDT web site.
Our maps came hand-delivered this week, courtesy of Bob - a very kind, elderly gentleman who is a volunteer with the MDT and lives not far from us in Newark. Having Bob miss our driveway by a good six feet and park his car on the lawn seemed like a reasonable trade-off for this quick response to our request for maps. I mentioned to Bob that his front tire was flat, and then we sent him off with our best wishes and "hope to see you on the trail" goodbyes.
This section began with a short few blocks through downtown Elkton, which is nice, then past the crumbling edges of town onto country roads. We met a couple of boys dragging a rather large puppy away from a frenzied, fenced collection of mongrels. "What do we have here?", we asked. "Half Chesapeake Bay retriever, half pit bull", they responded proudly. Ah. Leave it to Elktonites to invent a breed that can maul you underwater.
The trail takes you down some country roads which are nice enough and afford an occasional glimpse of the bay, but as you would expect in these parts, have no shoulder to walk on, and what little there is is littered with trash. Trucks, SUVs and old muscle cars roar by with enough frequency to keep you jumping from pavement to berm. Resonating from various directions is the seemingly never-ending bark of dogs. I noticed one elderly resident peeking out from behind the curtains, and imagined her to be on constant watch should any socialists decide to take up residence in her neighborhood.
At the end of the road trek you make your way past a couple of church revival camps and then you're into Elk Neck State Forest. And what a remarkable change it is. For the next several miles - the majority of this section - you are hiking through a relatively young hardwood forest with the occasional stand of white pine. The understory is remarkably open - so much so that it was often difficult to follow the trail, given that it was buried under a thick carpet of leaves and blended right in with the rest of the forest floor. Fortunately, in the most difficult spots, the trail maintainers have done an excellent job marking the way. Excellent, but not perfect - we still managed to wander off on what looked like "the" trail many times, only to back-track when we failed to notice any blazes after ten minutes of walking.
As you reach the other side of the State Forest, you begin to pick up the rural outskirts of Northeast, MD, with all their friendly reminders to not trespass nor even so much as cast your gaze upon the rusting hulks of machinery and piles of not-sure-what gracing their property. The Cecil County landfill apparently feels obligated to post no-trespassing signs on every other tree for the duration of the trail boundary (okay, we get it... no trespassing... which is a shame, because I was so looking forward to hiking through a landfill). But that quickly gives way to a short, nice stretch of wildlife sanctuary, then you pop out of the woods along cemetery road in Northeast.
Our motivational plan all along was to hit Woody's Crab House for dinner as our reward for six hours on the trail, but they were closed for a special event. A quick change of plans led us over to Pier 1 where we feasted on crab ravioli, steak and fried shrimp. Highly recommended when you're in town!
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