Rainy days

After taking way too many zeros at Tarzan's house in New Jersey, we decided to leave early and do 26 miles to a monastery pavilion where we could camp for free. It was a rough leaving the comfort of a bed, looking out from underneath my blanket I could see out the window that it was raining hard, at a steady pace. Tarzan, Ross, Pack Rat, Nate, and I packed up and headed toward the trail. The rain continued to fall all day. We had to rush through the exhibits at a zoo the AT runs directly through... the cold rain quickened our pace. We finally made it to the pavilion around 7:00, ate a quick dinner and went to bed early. The next day we had another 26 mile day planned and the weather was looking much better. The trail was pretty muddy but at least it wasn't raining. We got an early start the next morning and hit the trail at 7:00. 19 miles in, there was an awesome shelter that you could order pizza for delivery. I was starved! I wimped out of the 26 miles, stayed at 19 and emjoyed my pizza. Ross joined me. An hour or so after eating my pizza, Tarzan and Nate came running up to the shelter without their packs and asked us if we wanted to to go to some guys house and then to a bar to watch a band. Seven of us went with Nate and Tarzan. A random guy posted a sign 3 miles ahead of the shelter saying that he was boarding hikers and driving them to a bar because his buddy was playing in the band that night. He was recruiting an audience. Turns out this guy, Bill, through hiked in '06 and bought a house 0.2 miles from the trail. They gave us some beers, we hung out got a bit and then headed to this pretty trendy bar in Cool Springs, New York. We rolled with seven hikers... none of us showered after a full day of hiking and we all looked like bums. The place was packed but we got lucky and snatched a table right by the band. I guess people could smell us because a waitress walked by and discretely sprayed Febreeze towards us. Bill, his wife and kids got hit in the face by the spray. He got ultra pissed at the owner of the place and had to change his shirt. It was hilarious because about ten minutes later, the same waitress brought us all ice cream. It was delicious! After a night of drinking a few beers and going to sleep late, we all woke up pretty late in the second story of Bill's garage. Bill's wife made us waffles. They were so good! Turns out Bill has skydived like 74 times and works for a skydiving company. Tarzan went with him that morning to skydive, super random but he said it was badass. It would have been cool to skydive for the first time in the middle of a through hike. That night, we stayed at a landscape business that allows hikers to pitch a tent on their property. There was a fantastic deli down the road and I smashed a huge pastrami sandwich. The tent space was between a road and some train tracks so it was a loud night. Today we woke up early and got out before 7:00. We were heading for Mt. Algo Shelter, in Connecticut!  It was a shorter day, around 16 miles. I really wanted to get to the shelter early so I could avoid the afternoon showers. I got rained on for about 2 hours but it was lighter rain and felt good. I'm excited to be in another state and only have 5 more to go. Tomorrow ill go through Kent, Connecticut to get a small resupply. Still having a blast :) 

New Jersey!!

Got to the New Jersey border on Wednesday 5/29. I am still hiking with Tarzan so he was excited to get to his home town. His sister, who temporarily got off the trail because of her hurt knee, picked us up at a road crossing and drive us to his house in Glen Rock, New Jersey. We stayed at his house and took a zero the next day. It was awesome to hang around his home town and hang out with his friends. It's making me miss home and all my friends, but we are making good time and should be at mile marker 1300 in a couple days. I'm still having a lot of fun and I'm thinking I'll be at Mt. Katadin by mid July. We are planing on doing some day hikes with light packs and spending the night at his house for the next few days.

New Jersey is also very rocky. 

Long hair!! 

New Jersey is awesome! 

We're movin now!

So far the terrain after Harpers Ferry has been incredibly easy. We hiked out of Harpers Ferry on Friday, May 17th and almost immediately hit Maryland. We did a 16 mile day on Friday and a 25 mile day on Saturday and we were out of Maryland. I love how fast I went through two states after being in Virginia for over a month. I've been hiking with Tarzan for the past few days. He was meeting his mom in Pen Mar County Park, PA on Saturday. She hiked a couple of days with us and invited me to stay with them on Saturday night. We left her car at Pen Mar Park (the AT goes through it) then Tarzan, his mother, Roswell, and I hiked 8 miles on Sunday and 9 on Monday. We ended up at a road where Tarzan hitch hiked back to the park to get his mom's car. We drove to a hostel that was 19 miles further down the trail and stayed at a hostel. We ate at an Italian restaurant. On Tuesday we left all the stuff that was in our packs in Tarzan's mom's car, she drove us where we got off the trail, and then slack packed 19 miles back to the hostel where Tarzan's mom was offering trail magic of hot dogs and sodas. The day went by real quick since our packs were so light. Once we got back to his moms car, we loaded our packs again and hiked 7 more miles to the shelter. We stayed with Tarzan's mom for a few days... she is super cool! She was extremely helpful and was very nice! Wednesday and today we did 26.3 miles. It was easy because we did 12 miles to Boiling Springs, PA and then it was 14 miles of no elevation, truly flat terrain to Darlington Shelter. We took a long break in Boiling Springs because it was a very nice little town. We got lazy and ended up leaving at around 4:00. It got late really quick. At around 6:30 it started raining pretty hard. Now that it's hot outside, the rain isn't that bad. We were 7 miles from the shelter at 6:30. We got there at around 8:20... just before the clouds made it nearly impossible to see the wet rocks under us. Tarzan wants to make it to his house in NJ as soon as possible so I'm doing big miles with him. I want to do the second half of the trail way quicker than the first.