Dillsburg, PA to Whiskey Springs, PA
section miles: 9 total miles: 170
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment