Section 14: Dillsburg to Whiskey Springs

April 14, 2012
Dillsburg, PA to Whiskey Springs, PA
section miles: 9     total miles: 170

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Arrived! After 14 days of section hiking, spread across 3 months, we finally set foot on the Appalachian trail, 170 miles from our front door, give or take. The secret to our success is quite simple: each week Rene would announce, “Do you want to hike this weekend, or do you want to stay home and fix the leak in the bathroom faucet?”, at which point I would start packing. Or something to that effect.

The final section is all road walking, and truth be told, we were ready to get that part over with. There were nice views, to be sure, but the traffic was unusually busy, the narrow shoulders kept us hopping on and off the roadway, and we’ve grown weary of the all too common, bad-dog vigil at this point. The photos show the best of it, which presents a somewhat optimistic impression, as I've tried to avoid portraying the tougher living situations we've encountered throughout this trek.

This was an easy walk, however, and we stopped to picnic at a nice park, where a day of little-league baseball was just getting started. I’ve had this trail fantasy of popping out of the woods only to discover a little country grocery store with fresh sandwiches and cold drinks, so my eyes lit up in a “close enough!” way when I saw the baseball snack bar opening. Sorry, the nice ladies said, nothing will be ready for thirty minutes.

“But.. I walked here all the way from Delaware. Can I have, maybe, a half-cooked hot dog or something?” I noticed Rene doing her best “I don’t know this guy” impression over at the picnic pavillion as she quickly repacked.

“You did what?” All the ladies gathered around. “You walked here?”

“Yup. 160 miles.”

“Today? From Delaware?”

“Well, no, not today, but I mean, over several weeks.”

“Good Lord! Well, we could microwave it, I suppose... can we get you anything else?”

So I feasted on a luke-warm hotdog smothered in frozen onion chunks and loved every bite. Strange how that works. Not-so-strange was Rene being about 500 yards down the road at this point, as people started to stare and point in my direction. We ambled a few miles further and happened upon an outdoor estate auction. Hiker nirvana. Not only did they have lots of useless junk to forage through, but also sandwiches and soda and fries and pretzels and homemade pies and cakes and cookies. When it comes to pastries, Rene’s embarrassment factor drops to zero, so we plopped down right in the middle of the auction and grazed on some kind of brownie-whoopie pie confection, which was delicious.

From the auction site it was just a few short miles up the road to the AT, which crossed at a worn-down low spot between the hills, with a few well-used parking spots and a small stream coursing through a drainage pipe (Whiskey Springs?). There were the customary white-blazes marking the AT and three blue blazes marking the end of the MD-T; all of which seemed a tad disappointing, but eventually we noticed a sign posted high in a tree marking the western terminus of the trail. The AT itself was remarkably trammeled, as if herds of elephants routinely made their way along this route. Even the rocks themselves seemed pummeled into the ground in submission, although I’m sure that through-hikers beg to differ. We hiked a short distance up the AT, far enough to find a big, bare-ground, party fire ring left by folks not too clear on the whole trail concept, and then settled on a rocky prominence for a brief celebration with chocolate cake, yogurt and raspberries. Food, as you might have noticed, figures prominently in our adventures.

So now what? Well, we decided that we might as well hike the entire Mason-Dixon trail, now heading east from Newark to Chadd’s Ford, which isn’t that much of a stretch. Other than White Clay Creek, it will be mostly roads again, but we like the idea of finishing end-to-end, and we’re expecting (hoping) the roads will be interesting as they pass through Brandywine country. On a final note, it is customary for hikers on the AT to adopt trail names, and we decided to extend this to the M-DT. I was thinking of something like “Studly ‘n’ Elf”, but somehow this morphed into the now-official “Chicken ‘n’ Dumplings” in Rene’s mind. I’m not sure what she’s implying here, but it must be that food thing again.

Section 13: Gifford Pinchot State Park to Dillsburg

April 13, 2012
Gifford Pinchot State Park, PA to Dillsburg, PA
section miles: 14     total miles: 161

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The day before we reach the AT, and the anticipation is mounting. Not that we want to get it over with, but it’s exciting to be this close and have all these miles behind us. This section brought us back onto legitimate trail and thankfully off the roads for the most part. We drove to our starting point on Pinchot lake, expecting to have the place to ourselves on a Friday, but instead found the parking lots buried in bank-to-bank trucks and trailers. Turns out that today was a Bass Masters tournament on the lake. Fascinating how much technology and horsepower it takes to outwit a fish these days. With a little manual trailer repositioning - when nobody was looking, of course - we managed to squeeze the Mini between a couple of contestants and were off.

The hike around the lake was pleasant, but very muddy in spots. Mostly it was the consistency of firm clay - as-in hey let’s stop and make some pots clay - but several sections were totally under water. Rene stopped to don her wading shoes a few times; I slobbered on as usual, log-hopping until I was sufficiently drenched to not care anymore. We paused briefly to invent soon-to-be-famous “M-DT disc golf”, using some hefty slices of tree logs found conveniently stacked around the official lakeside course. The drivers tend to land with a resounding thud a good thirty feet away, but maybe I wasn’t using the proper wrist action.

Past the lake, a brief section of road-walking through some nice farmland brought us to the State Game Lands, where it was trail the rest of the way. Much of the trail here is new, having recently been approved by the state and relocated off the roads. Which is great! Except... that means the trail doesn’t match the maps, putting you at the mercy of the blazers. Technically we had a revised trail guide to go by, typed up and printed out all nice and neat on a piece of paper from the internet, but technically we left it back in the car (I won’t mention any names). We debated: stick with the old written description (roads) or try and follow the new. A vote was held, and since women’s suffrage hasn’t reached this part of PA (according to me), the majority opted for the new trail.

It went fairly well up to about the mid-way point through the game lands, at which point the trail vanished spectacularly at a road crossing. I wandered up and down the road looking for any clue whatsoever, while Rene folded her arms and tapped her feet with her best I-told-you-so look. A couple of locals were somewhere nearby, unseen but way too close, blasting away incessantly with shotguns as if trying to melt their barrels, which wasn’t helping my case one bit. Eventually we found a questionable blue smudge that appeared to be associated with a dark hole in an otherwise impenetrable mass of underbrush, and in we went like Alice. Fortunately it was the right choice (the M-DT blazers have this maddening habit of putting a nice fresh blaze about 100 yards or more down a trail, way past the point where you need some reassurance). A few more head-scratching moments with some occasional back-tracking, and we finally popped out on the other side of the game lands where our car awaited.

Overall a beautiful, crisp and sunny day, capped off with a spicy date to a mexican restaurant and a visit to the Wegman’s grocery before retiring to our hotel. You know you’ve reached that certain age when a fine grocery store serves up hours of entertainment.

Section 12: Manchester to Gifford Pinchot State Park

April 8, 2012
Manchester, PA, to Gifford Pinchot State Park, PA
section miles: 14      total miles: 147

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As I write this (in arrears), we are packed and ready to leave tomorrow morning for our last two hikes before reaching the western end of the M-DT at the AT. Hard to believe.

Today was just a continuation of our last section - more road walking with little to write home about, except for the last mile when we arrived at the State Park. I’m showing some bland pics of roads because, well, that’s what it is. We did pass by the home of the Michelangelo of chain-saw sculpture (and I regret that I didn’t make note of his name), and spent some time taking photos of his work. We trudged on for hours trying to find somewhere to sit and have lunch, but every inch of land is posted, and eventually we just plopped down on the road berm and hoped the local sheriff didn’t pass by.

Other than that, the big excitement for the day was a return to dog country. Apparently not wanting to be out-gunned by the confederates down Maryland, the Pennsylvania boys around these parts have armed themselves with entire herds of canines. Three rottweilers salivating at the edge of an “invisible fence” is not exactly something I want to walk by, even though the owner calls out from under his truck hood, “Don’t worry, they can’t get ya!” Well maybe so, but we were ready for ‘em... we learned our lesson weeks ago, and now have pepper spray attached to our shoulder straps. My finest hour came when I rightly surmised that an approaching homestead would be dog-ridden and convinced Rene to cross over and swing as far around it as we could. Sure enough, there were... I dunno, maybe a dozen poodle-y things, all about the size of a cat. Let’s just say that I heard about this more than once over the next few miles.

Section 11: Accomac to Manchester

April 7, 2012
Accomac, PA to Manchester, PA
section miles: 14     total miles: 133

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From this point on, the “trail” becomes somewhat of an abstract concept, or perhaps more like wishful thinking on the part of the dedicated volunteers at the Mason-Dixon trail organization. Most of it , by far, is simply road walking, as we say goodbye to the Susquehanna river and head west toward the intersection with the AT. Which is fine and interesting in its own right - don’t get me wrong. To their credit, they keep you off the main roads for the most part, and many are lightly-travelled dirt or gravel roads that offer nice walking and the occasional scenic view. But there are also swaths of new construction to wade through, particularly as you pass through the various small towns within commuting distance of York and Harrisburg.

The terrain next to the river has flattened considerably at this point, and we noted our first exposures of Pennsylvanian red-beds as we headed west. Thankfully Rene didn’t find them sufficiently interesting so as to load my pack with samples. We learned some things about half-log construction used in this area back in colonial days, and stopped to admire the Codorus Furnace, a pre-revolutionary iron-smelting furnace that sits forlornly and unceremoniously by the side of the road, where it now serves admirably as a local teen climbing gym and nightclub, judging by the refuse.

I’ll let the photos do the rest of the trail-talking here, but I did want to mention one thing. If you EVER are in the vicinity of York, make a point to stop at the Moonlight Cafe in Dover (just outside of York). It doesn’t look like much on the outside - in fact, it looks like a used-car dealer’s shack, which it very well might have been, because it’s right in the middle of car lots - but this is the best Italian restaurant not found in a major city. Bring cash, bring a bottle of wine, and expect to wait... there are only 12 tables, and it’s very popular.