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.

Half Way There... Harpers Ferry

After leaving the family on Mother's Day weekend, my foot started to give me problems. I had to start doing lower mile days so I took a little longer to get to Harpers Ferry, WV. I got in to town on Wednesday and stayed in a hostel. Ross left that same day. I woke up in the morning with a stomach ache and was not feeling ready to hike so I took the day off in Harpers and sat around the hostel until I recovered. I got a text from Tarzan that he would be in town on Friday and I was pretty pumped to hear that. I had hiked about 400 miles with him and his sister until she got hurt in Pearisburg, VA and he stayed behind with her. It's been about a month since we've hiked together. I'm leaving today and going into Maryland, officially leaving the south soon. I'm pretty sad about that. I've walked a total of 1,019 miles. I can't believe it.