Christmas comes early

Happy Thanksgiving!

Rene's nefarious plan to get me to finish the M-DT blog having met with success, she cordially presented me with an early Christmas present - maps and a trail guide for the Horse-shoe trail.  It appears that our hiking days are not ending, but starting anew, so I guess I will need to subtitle this blog somewhat differently.  Previously "Section hiking the Mason-Dixon Trail" will now be "Hiking the mid-Atlantic" or something along those lines.  Naturally, she has the first leg thoroughly researched, and we depart tomorrow for our new adventure.

The Horse-shoe trail is a 140-mile equestrian and hiking path that runs from Valley Forge west to the Appalachian Trail at Stoney Mountain.  The official trail dates from 1935, but portions date back to trails that connected the various furnaces, iron forges and charcoal forests in this part of Pennsylvania as far back as the 18th century.  We've tracked down a few scattered blog and forum entries hoping to get a little insight on the hike, and the best we can tell is that we'll see some road walking early, becoming a bit more rugged hiking as one heads west.  A long-distance runner completed the entire trail in 30-some hours, noting the difficulty of running on shoulder-less roads (walking ain't much better, let me tell ya), finding blazes that marked the way in strategic locations (yup, we hear ya on that one), and the inevitable scourge of pointy little Pennsylvania rocks hiding under a bed of slick leaves (ditto).  Another blogger described his first four miles, filled with hills and houses and pleasant enough until we get to the part where he had to take evasive action to avoid a big, aggressive dog intent on mayhem (why is this starting to sound all-too familiar).

So the plan calls for our now well-honed strategy: take advantage of nice weather, find some open weekends and holidays here and there, try to make about 10-15 miles each day we hike, avoid hunting days, and get it done before hot weather, bugs and storms arrive in the spring. So we're looking at maybe two weeks of hiking to reach the AT again by May.  Can't wait to get started!

Some links:
Horse-shoe Trail Conservancy
Horse-shoe Trail long-distance run
A few words about the trail from a casual hiker family
The first four miles: one guy's day hike (warning: potentially offensive content)

Eastern Terminus. Done!

October 26, 2012
Hockessin, DE to Chadds Ford, PA
section miles: 10     total miles: 196

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This blog post is brought to you by the Miracle of Christmas. Meaning Rene has threatened to take away my Christmas present if I don't get the blog written before Thanksgiving.  Never one to procrastinate, I still have 6.2 hours to make the deadline.  Which, by the way, is about twice as long as it took us to walk this final section of the Mason-Dixon Trail.

The easternmost leg of the trail is one of those head-scratching, let's walk down roads through random neighborhoods sections that make you wonder about the point of it all, but the weather was lovely and the fall colors were fabulous and we had Hank's Diner waiting at the end.  A young mother jogged by with a baby stroller on a shady road through a woody, wealthy subdivision.   "Are you... HIKING?" she called out, incredulous.  Why yes, we are... sort of.  It's like jogging, only slower.  Much slower, in our case.

There are a few touches of  bona fide trail along the way; maybe two miles or so in total.  The trail guides had noted that we had to "cross a creek", so we hiked all day well prepared with wading shoes and extra socks and hiking poles, only to discover a trickle of water spanned by a tidy little bridge, like something you'd see in a garden.  Further on we stumbled upon an archer sitting in a tree stand with a dead buck sprawled out on the ground about thirty yards away -  a situation that seemed oddly disconnected, like somebody else's deer just happened to expire a short distance from where this guy was perched, perfectly motionless.  I'm not sure who was more surprised: him, us, or the deer. 

The end of the trail brings you along the floodplain of the Brandywine River, which is scenic but festooned with stinging nettle (memo to self: wear long pants next time).   I had visions of a long hike along the river as it winds out of Chadds Ford, but unfortunately the path was all to short, and before you know it, you are dumped out onto an industrial lane, where one-hundred yards later you reach the eastern terminus of the trail, marked unceremoniously and randomly next to a telephone pole across from some dilapidated building. Dear Trail Guys, we love you, and heartfelt thanks for all the trail effort, but c'mon, man, put the end of the trail at the edge of the woods, not halfway down some alley.  From there it was a life-threatening dash along Route 1 to get across the river to our car parked at the Brandywine Museum.    

This is the part where, having just completed an entire footpath end-to-end, one is supposed to reflect back on the journey as a singular life experience and wax poetic.  But let's just say this: 200 miles is a durn long way to walk in a directional sense (as opposed to say, 800 laps around your high-school track), and we are both proud and astonished that we actually did it.  The walking is easy - one foot in front of the other, repeat for several hours - but it's the planning, the finding time, the getting organized, the putting off of other things, the avoiding all excuses why you can't do it... that's the hard part, and the part Rene tackled with aplomb.  I never could have done it without her.

Northbound Day 2

October 21, 2012
Landenberg, PA to Hockessin, DE
section miles: 9     total miles: 186

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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.

On the Trail Again - Heading North

October 20, 2012
Newark, DE to Landenberg, PA
section miles: 7     total miles: 177

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I've forgotten how to do this. Not the blog - I'm talking about the hiking. I stepped in the door today at noon, and there was Rene, waiting patiently with the backpacks loaded.

"We're going to finish this. Let's go."

"Or?"

"The dehumidifier is not draining."

"Oh... right...  I'll get my boots."

So we're back at it.  It's a mere stone's throw to finish up at the northern terminus of the Mason Dixon Trail in Chadd's Ford - twenty-some miles away from our house - and we'll do it in three legs.  Today was an easy jaunt through White Clay Creek State Park and a few blocks through our neighborhood. We wondered aloud how many times we have walked this section in the past fifteen years... maybe a hundred? But it is always beautiful, and never more so than right now at the peak of autumn color.

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.