October 21, 2012
Landenberg, PA to Hockessin, DE
section miles: 9 total miles: 186
Here we are, just a few short miles from finishing up this entire trail, not expecting much, and lo and behold, we have the perfect day. By my standards, anyway. A nice cafe in the morning before hitting the trail, a nice pizza place at the end (with beer!), and a nice little-league bake sale strategically placed in between. Nirvana.
Okay, so there was one minor glitch. While driving to position the cars at both ends of the hike, we had to navigate a mile or two out of our way to avoid road construction. Did it remotely penetrate our morning stupor that we were going to be WALKING along this road under construction? No. Sure enough, after a hiking a couple of miles through the last timber lands of White Clay Creek to start the day, we popped out onto the road only to discover a brutal gash carved through the creek where a bridge once stood. Rene's idea was to try and butt-scoot across the creek on construction barriers, but that sounded too dangerous to me, so I offered to ferry her across piggy-back if we could go upstream where it became shallow. That part was fine, especially once my feet became so numb from the cold water that I couldn't feel the rocks any more. The real issue was the impenetrable barrier of brambles and poison ivy on both banks. Rene voiced some doubts about my plan. "Follow me, and just don't touch anything", I offered helpfully, wallowing on, only to emerge shredded from head to toe. I'm still removing thorns as we type.
Once safely across the creek, the remainder of the hike was all road walking until we reached Hockessin, DE, some six miles away. Pleasant enough walking through a mix of populace: the folks who gravitate to the 100-200 year-old farm house lifestyle, the folks who like a nice big plot of land to raise horses, the folks who like a nice big plot of land to raise lawns, and those Edward Scissorhands neighborhoods where everyone seems to really, really enjoy beige. But regardless, everywhere you looked people had decorated for Fall and Halloween, making the entire day very festive.
For those who've never been, this is mushroom country, and we hiked briskly past several establishments with ripe, steaming piles of mushroom soil heaped outside the buildings. A couple of immigrant workers hung out next to some "housing" that was about as bleak a picture as you could imagine. I was thinking that there's a documentary waiting to be made here, if one hasn't been already.
Lastly, here's a random thought about our walking pace. I just passed one of those anniversary dates where an employee is graciously recognized for his or her decades of corporate service with some nifty gift options, all of which failed to sell in the outlet stores and now have to be disposed of somehow. So fifteen years of daily bliss earned me a Garmin hand-held GPS device that dates from the Pleistocene, but it does provide some accuracy in terms of location, distance and time. And from this we learned to question the Mason-Dixon maps we've been using all this time. Today's segment was 6.8 miles according to the trail guide, and 8.9 miles by GPS. That's a substantial difference, to say the least. Looking back on all those hikes where I expressed my total disbelief at how "slow our pace" was, I'm now thinking that maybe we weren't that slow after all, and we've hiked a bit further than documented.
