Week Twelve – Halfway There and Being “Back Home Again”

Hey everyone! It was yet another big week on the World’s Longest Footpath-Only Adventure. Here’s what happened!

Day 78, Monday June 5: For the first time in what felt like ages, I woke up to the slowly-increasing light and birdsong filtering into our tent. Since it was getting light earlier I first woke up around 6am, immediately shutting my phone back off and falling back to sleep until just before 6:45. I walked groggily to the privy and then retrieved our food bags from the bear pole, this one much easier to use than the previous bear pole since the lifting pole was much lighter. The camp site, called the Pogo Memorial Camp Site, was a labyrinthine maze of stony pathways between trees and other tentsites; there couldn’t possibly be a good reason that the camp site needed its own twenty miles of trail. I finally found my way back to our tent site and we began to pack up camp. We started hiking around 8am, with cool air and blue skies. The Trail quickly transformed from the wide, manicured runway we had experienced the previous day to a rocky boulevard of slips, trips, and falls. Meadow mentioned that Pennsylvania, the state known to be so rocky that Thru-Hikers call it Rocksylvania, was the leading state in causing Thru-Hikers to leave the trail with injuries. We were expecting to cross the Maryland-Pennsylvania border at some point later that day, and we talked about having “constant vigilance” while in PA so we didn’t fall or slip on the rocks. Apparently I was waiting until we hit PA before engaging my constant vigilance, because five minutes later I tripped on a rock. Once I turned sideways and gravity caught my pack I knew it was game over, but I was able to lower myself to the ground relatively gracefully with my trekking poles. I lay across the rocks in a tangled heap with my pack and trekking poles, momentarily incapacitated because I was laughing so hard. I unclipped my hip belt and chest clip before getting up, leaving my pack where it had fallen until I could stand up, and then heaved it back into place before tottering carefully over the rocks to catch up with Meadow. We hiked carefully through the rocky minefield for a few hours until it was time for second breakfast, and we pulled over into a shelter. We needed to filter more water so we hiked up a short side trail to a spring, which we found full of stagnant water with a cloud mosquitoes swarming through the air. The lack of rain over the last two weeks is starting to manifest in lower streams, and the smaller springs are beginning to run dry. We elected to skip the malaria spring, and pressed on to the shelter where we found the stream running slowly but still running. We cooked grits with summer sausage for the first time in a while, and I realized that I actually like the grits as long as there is summer sausage to add. The tuna noodle casserole recipe that I prepared in advance is now solidly in a distant last place for favorite meals, right behind the grits. The three oatmeals are still in the top three position for favorite, followed by the curry and burrito recipes. But I digress! After eating a hearty second breakfast and filling up all of our water bottles, we headed back to the trail. Although adding summer sausage to the grits makes them taste better, it also causes certain aromatic side effects…it wasn’t exactly pleasant walking behind Meadow for the rest of the morning! We hiked for several miles through varied scenery, including a wide open right-of-way with a sea of bright-faced daisies, a narrow corridor through hedges of sweet multiflora rose, and more ankle-busting rocks.

Around 2pm we came to a rocky outcropping where we stopped for a snack break. Meadow found a small tick embedded in her leg, so I used the tick removal key to safely remove it, and gave her an alcohol wipe to clean the area just in case. We’re fairly certain it wasn’t embedded long enough to transmit Lyme’s disease, which is a good thing. After finishing our snacks we hiked a few more miles until we hit Pen-Mar Park, a gorgeous park right before the state border. We took a break and decided to cook dinner while we had ample water available, since the next stream was listed in our Trail mapping app as being unsafe to drink from even when filtered. We grabbed so e water from the park and rehydrated our potato corn chowder and ‘walking burrito’ on a park bench.

After filling up our water bottles, we hit the trail again and quickly reached the state border…we were finally back in Pennsylvania! It felt great to be back in our home state, and finishing up our sixth state means that only had eight more to go. We celebrated for a few seconds and basked in the accomplishment before continuing on. We stopped to camp less than a mile after crossing the border, setting up camp relatively quickly. After a quick listen of John Denver’s “Back Home Again,” I got the bear rope over a tall branch on the first try, relieved that my slingshot skills hadn’t atrophied. Another through hiker named Yoga decided to camp with us, and when he saw our bear rope his eyebrows shot up. “Is that YOUR bear line?” he asked. He was definitely surprised when I answered in the affirmative, probably because my rope was suspended over a small branch about thirty feet in the air. “That’s pretty good…” and he went to go put up his tent and hang his own bear line. We had already eaten dinner at the park, but I ate a protein bar and we split a few Oreos…you know, just to make sure I wouldn’t wake up hungry! Sleeping Bag O’Clock came around 8pm, and I fell asleep in the fading light to the sounds of the allegedly-polluted stream.

Day 79, Tuesday June 6: We awoke and broke camp as usual, starting to hike around 8. We started the day with a rocky uphill climb, quickly warming up in the chilly air. The air was incredibly humid, and there was a haze in the air caused by the air particulates from wildfires in Canada. The haze caused the sunshine to stay golden long past the normal time for the “sunrise” light. It was strange to see the warm golden rays dancing on the forest floor and ferns well past 10am.

We stopped off at a shelter to cook another rousing round of grits with summer sausage (woohoo!) for second breakfast. We were getting slightly low on water, but I saw on our map that we were less than two miles from a public park that had potable water available year-round, so we decided not to collect water from a silty trickle flowing across the trail. After hiking about two miles we crossed over a VERY rickety bridge with a sign nailed to it; based on the bounce in the bridge timbers I expected the sign to say “Get off this bridge immediately.” But what it actually said was “Trail Magic Today. Really, Today!” We followed the AT to Forge Community Park, and a few more signs (“Up the hill, you’re almost there!”) led us to a pavilion where a jovial man in his mid-60s was in the middle of grilling hot dogs. Thru-Hikers that we had met on the trail that morning, Granny Gear and PW, were already there. As Meadow and I approached, the Trail Angel named Tycoon called to us. “Feel free to leave your packs out here, and hit up the hand sanitizer before stopping over!” It was clear Tycoon knew what he was doing! We took advantage of a picnic table to drop our bags, and visited an enormous bottle of hand sanitizer before entering the magical pavilion. Tycoon had cold drinks, cold clementines (WOWEEE!!!), a selection of Tastycakes, a small hiker box, and an arsenal of hot dogs and condiments. Seeing that we both wore glasses, Tycoon grabbed two lens wipes and walked them over to us, saying “You don’t know what you’re missing!” And he was right–my glasses had not been that clean since Gatlinburg. He confirmed that we wanted hot dogs before setting them in the grill. I asked him what his connection to the trail was, and he said that he attempted a Thru-Hike in 2018 but decided to quit after 1,300 miles. He said cooking hot dogs was easier than hiking so he wanted to do that instead. I wanted very badly to ask why he quit after making it so far, but I figured he would have told us if he was interested in sharing. After a few minutes two more Thru-Hikers arrived, Smoke and Frostbite, both men in their late fifties or early sixties (I guessed). We chatted with them while we ate our hot dogs. Frostbite, who looked exactly like a middle-aged Glen from “The Good Place,” had recently retired and was scratching the surface of his bucket list by hiking the AT. As he spoke I realized that we had seen him before, just briefly for a few seconds on the porch of the Woods Hole hostel when we stopped in for a quick resupply. He had met Smoke on the trail a short while after that and they had started to hike together. Smoke was a manufacturing engineer who had been given a leave of absence by his employer, and said he had a few years of work left in him yet once the trail was over. He was being intentional about not rushing the AT and wanting to savor it. “That’s where my trail name came from: I don’t want to just hike the AT, I want to put it in my [proverbial] pipe and smoke it.” Tycoon asked us repeatedly if we wanted another hot dog, and our new hiker friends each had three. “Want to hear my Rock Warning?” Tycoon asked us. We of course said yes on the off chance his wisdom would save our lives or our hikes, and he launched into it. “It’s going gto be rocky in Pennsylvania. The best thing you can do is abandon hope that it will get better, because it won’t. Make sure your shoes are new enough to have decent tread. Plan every step, because the rocks will move on you.” We all nodded in agreement, and with that the Rock Warning was over. We had already been expecting the rocks to get bad in Pennsylvania and stick around basically until we summited Mount Katahdin, but at least we had further confirmation that this was correct! We chatted with Smoke, Frostbite, and Tycoon for a while longer before heading back to the trail. Just before we left the park we stopped to fill our water bottles from the park spigot specifically labelled for our use, and we entered the forest once again.

We hiked on for what felt like many miles, through tunnels of mountain laurel in full bloom. In the afternoon, hazy clouds rolled in and the sky turned dark very quickly. About six fat raindrops fell, and then the sun slowly came out again. The heat and humidity were quite draining, and my feet hurt quite a lot more than they had the previous few days. We arrived at Caledonia State Park around 4:30pm, where we had originally planned to camp, but quickly realized that the campground was almost a mile off the trail and we didn’t have existing reservations. After a half hour sitting break and a snack, we decided to press onward to the next shelter, which was over two miles away. We hiked up a very steep and rocky section of trail, sweating and swearing, until the trail leveled out into a golden-sunlit ocean of blooming mountain laurel.

After just over an hour, we reached the most beautiful pair of shelters that I have seen so far. A dedicated shelter maintenance group of volunteers keeps this shelter looking like a million bucks at all times, complete with hanging baskets of flowers, a grouted stone fireplace, immaculate picnic tables and tent platforms, and freshly-painted shelter interiors. I’ve paid actual money to stay in hotels that were less nice than these shelters! This felt like home right after dumping our packs and immediately switching into camp shoes. We set up our sleeping kits in one of the two shelter bays, and cooked dinner while chatting with our shelter mate, Bearfighter. His trail name came from a bear encounter on the Continental Divide where he fought/yelled at a bear to save his food (very much not recommended), but his version of the story took about 15 minutes to tell. He was very friendly, if a bit long-winded, and we were happy to have the company. As we ate dinner, who should appear but our old friends Dimitri and Lily! I had been thinking about them on and off since we saw them the morning after their bear encounter, and here they were. They had taken a few days off the trail after the bear incident, to rest and replace the gear that was destroyed by the bear, but were back at it now. Just as I had feared, they both said that they find it nearly impossible to sleep in the forest unless other people are nearby, so they had taken to setting up their tent directly next to shelters when ever they could. They still seemed to be enjoying the AT experience, and I was happy for them to be continuing their hike in spite of what had happened. After finishing our chores, I placed our food bags in the provided bear vault (what luxury indeed!) and we called it a night.

Day 80, Wednesday June 7: We awoke in the AT’s best-maintained shelter after a fitful night’s sleep. Between the relentless whippoorwills and the smooth floor that amplified the sound of our sleeping pads, neither Meadow or I slept very well. The shelter area was still beautiful to wake up to, and we packed up our sleeping gear and cooked a breakfast of grits to finish off the summer sausage. We enjoyed eating breakfast and chatting with Bearfighter before starting up the sunny trail. The air was still hazy from the ash particulates, and the golden hue to the sunshine stick around long after sunrise had ended. We egan the day by continuing our hike along a narrow gravelly corridor through an ocean of blooming white and pink mountain laurel.

After a few short miles we came to a large intersection where five gravel roads intersected. Dear family friends Cindy and Craig Dunn had graciously offered to let us stay at their cabin in Pine Grove Furnace State Park for a few days, and had even more graciously offered to slackpack us! Craig completed a section hike of the AT many years ago amd is extremely involved in supporting the AT in various ways, including playing an instrumental role in a critical trail reroute and is currently leading the trail maintenance efforts in the Cumberland Valley. Amazing! We met Craig at the gravelly intersection, and he handed us day packs to transfer our daily necessities into. He also gave us some pointers on the upcoming trail and a few good maps, which were extremely helpful. We planned our extraction point about twelve miles down the trail and said goodbye to Craig as he drove away with most of our heavy gear. With our lighter day packs and relatively flat terrain we cruised along, leaving the dusty gravel roads behind for a coniferous forest with tall, thin trees. We saw a shirt, fat animal scurrying away from us and at first glance I thought it was a raccoon…nope! The porcupine stopped several times to turn and look at us as well walked slowly behind it up the trail. Eventually it turned sideways, stopped one final time to glare at us, and then waddled quickly off the trail. He clambered a few feet up a tree trunk, slid down the bark, and then waddled deeper into the forest, disappearing from view.

After a few miles of walking along a soft, wide trail in the pine forest, we came to a partially open area. The underbrush was extremely short and scrubby and there were tall, thin trees poking out of the sea of short blueberry bushes and mountain laurel. The trail itself was a narrow, beaten swatch of dirt with a grassy border on either side, cutting through the short bushes and open canopy on either side. I saw some evidence of fire damage in some areas, which might have explained the short underbrush and lack of saplings. I enjoyed this section of trail immensely, squinting through the bushes to look for bears in between the blooming mountain laurel. I always feel caught in between hoping to see a bear and being relieved when I don’t!

After a few more miles of hiking we came across a huge milestone, or rather several huge milestones. The halfway point of the AT moves every year since the overall trail length changes, so we saw three separate “monuments” telling us that we made the halfway point: a stone 1/2, a stone 1,100 mile marker, and a large pole monument. We couldn’t tell exactly where the 1,099.2 mile marker was on the trail, but hitting the midpoint several times in one day just gave us more opportunities to celebrate! Making it halfway on the trail seemed so incredibly surreal, and neither of us could fully grasp the concept. This amazing adventure of a lifetime had seemed to fly by, and it was already half over?!

Around 3:30pm we reached our extraction point and Craig picked us up from the trail, whisking us a few miles into Pine Grove Furnace to their beautiful 1940s cabin. We showered and ate some snacks (Cindy–it was very generous and downright dangerous to write “Victory and Meadow–Please Eat Everything!” on the fridge!) and paged through a few bird and wildflower identification books before Cindy and Craig returned with dinner. We had an absolute feast of pizza, chicken wraps, salads, and barbecue chicken, and it was wonderful to spend some time with Cindy and Craig talking about the AT and work, etc. We briefly discussed how little Meadow and I know about bird calls (I used to be. much better at bird identification by their calls!), and Craig and I agreed that the grey-headed catbird has one of the most annoying calls out there. We watched and listened to the hummingbirds zip by the hummingbird feeders as we ate. Eventually we finished up dinner and Cindy and Craig headed home, and Meadow and I packed our day packs with food and supplies for the next days’ hike before heading to bed.

Day 81, Thursday June 8: We awoke after a good night’s sleep in beds once again. I had some cereal for breakfast, but Meadow opted to skip breakfast to save room for the Half Gallon Challenge. It is a tradition on the AT for Thru-Hikers to attempt to eat a whole half gallon of ice cream in one sitting at the Pine Grove Furnace camp store, which we would be passing later! Around 7:30am a good friend of Cindy and Craig’s came to pick us up, our shuttle for the day. Mike “One Throw” had completed his Thru-Hike of the AT just last year, and he had graciously offered to pick us up whenever we would need it while we were in the area. Mike was wearing work clothes when he picked us up, and he told us he was going to check out his section of trail that he maintains while we were hiking. He asked us about the trail and what we thought to far, and told us a few of his stories on the way to drop us off. Once we got there we discussed our extraction plan, mentioning that we weren’t sure how much hiking we would be able to do after the ice cream challenge and that we would let him know. He left us with a smile and a wave, and we started our daily hike. The air was incredibly hazy, and we could actually smell the musty odor of ash in the air from the forest fires in Canada. Although it wasn’t enough to burn my throat or make my eyes itch, I was still keenly aware of the fact that I was breathing in more particulates than normal. After about three miles we came across the landmark camp store at Line Grove Furnace state Park, arriving just a few minutes before they opened at 9am. Meadow purchased her half gallon of ice cream (a large tub of black raspberry and a pint of birthday cake) and started eating! I had originally been waffling for several weeks about whether or not I wanted to do the Half Gallon Challenge, but after getting the stomach flu I had decided that making myself recreationally sick on ice cream sounded much less fun. At the camp store I just picked out a pint of cappuccino crunch ice cream and a french toast muffin, and was content. It only took Meadow seventy-five minutes to eat all the ice cream, despite hitting a wall near the end of the black raspberry tub and a rocky start to the birthday cake ice cream. Meadow joined the Half Gallon Challenge Club! She put her name down in the logbook and received her tiny wooden spoon as a prize, but nothing will beat the honor of just knowing that she did it! We saw a few other names of people who had completed the challenge before us…the current record is a young woman who ate a half gallon of ice cream in just over FIVE MINUTES (yikes!). After finishing the copious amounts of ice cream, we sat at the store for over an hour to let things settle, and visited with some of the other hikers. Shaggy, a young man in us twenties also finished the challenge. We also ran into Lily and Dimitri again, who we learned had taken the trail names Rocks and Town. They had attempted the Half Gallon Challenge the day before, but they chose rocky road ice cream (big mistake!) and couldn’t even get through their first tubs. Dimitri said that by the time he got halfway through the first container, he had to start spitting out the mini peanut butter cups because he couldn’t stand to eat them anymore…yikes. Choosing any flavor with chunks was seemingly a bad idea, but at least it didn’t lit them off ice cream for too long: they were splitting a pint of cookies n’ cream when we found them.

After everything was settled, we collected ourselves and left the camp store. We were able to hike another twelve miles fueled by ice cream and minimal other carbs! We enjoyed passing through Pine Grove Furnace state park and seeing some of the lakes and beautiful forest, and eventually crossed over a railroad bed while a train was stopped a few hundred feet from the crossing. Immediately after we crossed and were safely on the other side, the train started moving again and blocked the path behind us. We hiked through some shallow stream valleys with a few low streams that looked desperate for rainfall, noting that the air smelled noticeably more like smoke. We reached the road where Mike was going to meet us, and only waited for about five minutes before he pulled up in his pickup truck. He rolled down the window and said “You two wouldn’t be lookin’ for a ride, would you?” Laughing, we hopped in and he offered us water, Gatorade, or a few ice cold roadies depending on what we were thirsty for, which was incredibly generous! On the way back to the cabin, we talked to Mike about his grandkids and some of his favorite parts of the trail on the northern half. By the time we reached the cabin I found myself wishing the drive was longer so we could have spent more time talking. He dropped us off and said that he would love to shuttle is again if we needed it next week, which was of course greatly appreciated. We said goodbye and I genuinely hoped to see him again sometime. My mom had already arrived at the cabin (hi, Mom!) and was preparing dinner for when Cindy, Craig, Nick, and our friends Leanne and Chris would also arrive. We showered and enjoyed the “loaner clothes” available at the Cabin, allowing us to wear something different than our hiking clothes. We spent a wonderful evening visiting and laughing at the cabin, before heading to bed.

Day 82, Friday June 9: We woke up early around 5:30am, and scrambled to eat breakfast and pack our day packs before hitting the road. Nick and Leanne joined us for hiking! Mom dropped us off at the previous days’ endpoint before heading back to the cabin. We started the day with a relatively short but very steep climb up to a rock maze, where we navigated slippery and steep rocks. We took our time to avoid slipping, and I enjoyed the rock scrambles.

After a few miles, we descended into the long, flat section of trail in the Cumberland Valley. The trail cut along and through large expanses of pasture and farm fields for several milea, with crops like corn and grain swaying in the gentle, warm breeze. We followed the trail through forested fence rows and across roads, stopping occasionally to take water breaks and forage a few delicious mulberries off of trees.

We passed a woman named Grace who was doing Trail Magic so that she would have “good Karma” when she Thru-Hikes in 2025. She had done her homework, and her Trail Magic station was well-stocked with all the snacks and essentials that many Thru-Hikers would be looking for. We ate walking tacos and answered Grace’s questions about the trail, before heading back out into the sunny expanse of fields. The skies began to cloud over late in the afternoon, and by the time we reached the Scott Farm AT Conservancy building a cold rain was falling. After a 17-mile day, all four of us were exhausted with aching feet! Cindy graciously picked us up and shuttles is back to the cabin, where we had another evening of revelry before going to sleep.

Day 83, Saturday June 10: Mom drove us back to the trail for another 7:15am start. Nick joined us once again for the day! Despite the brief rain the night before, the sun was shining once again and the temperatures were chilly but not cold. We began the day’s hike with a few miles of relatively flat terrain before a few rocky ascents. We hiked a few miles before stumbling out of the forested canopy into a wide Right of Way, where we admired the view in the sweltering heat. Who should come out of the forest behind us but our old friend Terry! We hadn’t seen him in several weeks, but it was wonderful to catch up with him about how his hike had been going. We talked about how we wanted to continue focusing on enjoying the AT experience, rather than start rushing to the finish. Terry also told us about his newfound secret talent to eat ice cream rapidly, since he finished the Half Gallon Challenge in an impressive eighteen minutes. “Boom!” Terry yelled, laughing. We chatted for a few minutes before heading off together, our little group of three going just ahead of Terry. We broke for lunch and then headed to Hawk Rock overlook, where old friends of Meadow’s Rachel and Aaron surprised us on the trail to say hi. Rachel had brought Meadow and I matching handkerchiefs with our trail names on them, which was so sweet!

They hiked with us as we descended the mountain into Duncannon, where even more family friends were waiting for us: Cindy, Craig, Roger, Crystal, and Evan! It was so wonderful to see everyone, and even more wonderful to be able to hike through Duncannon with everyone. It was fun to walk through the neighborhood streets lines with flowers and sidewalks with rainbow chalk drawings. We made a pit stop into 3B for the world’s largest ice cream cones before crossing the Clarks Ferry Bridge and ending at the parking lot, where Cindy drove us back to the cabin for dinner with family and friends. Dear friends Bea and Karl were able to stop by too, which was amazing! We had another wonderful evening spending time with everyone, and thank you to everyone who came out! After dinner, Meadow and I sorted through our resupply of food, which always takes longer than we think it should. After organizing our weeks’ worth of food, we stumbled upstairs and went to bed.

Day 84, Sunday June 11: We slept in until about 7:30am or a little after, and I struggled to groggily organize and pack my supplies. We ate a breakfast of eggs, cereal, cream-filled doughnuts, fruit, and bagels on the beautiful screened-in porch of the cabin. Cindy pointed out the trilling call of a hooded warbler singing in the coniferous trees I front of the cabin, and pulled up the Merlin app to document it. I remembered working with the eBirds application from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology back in college, but I wasn’t familiar with their app called “Merlin”–you can use it to identify birds based on its call or a photo, which is very exciting. I made a mental note to download it as soon as we had cell service! We enjoyed finishing breakfast and took some time to finish packing up our stuff before taking a few more photos at the cabin and saying goodbye to my mom. Cindy came with us to visit the Appalachian Trail Museum, which is located in Pine Grove Furnace State Park just across the parking lot from the camp store. The museum was a lovely place to visit and learn about the AT, with information-dense displays about how the trail came into existence, previous record-setting Thru-Hikers, and AT hiker culture. There was also a beautiful relief map of the whole trail, which highlighted how significant of a topographic feature the Smokies were…and how significant the New England states will be, especially the White Mountains and Katahdin. One of the original shelters built on the trail was removed and relocated to the museum, and I can confirm that I would have definitely pitched a tent rather than stayed in that shelter! It certainly put the existing shelters on the AT into perspective, and made them seem like watertight fortresses compared to the rickety structure of poles that the original Thru-Hikers endured. The lowest floor of the museum contains a space for kids to “Thru-Hike” by walking along a yellow stripe on the floor and reading about highlights in each state. Overall the museum is a beautiful building and the space is well-utilized to provide a wealth of information. It was wonderful to be there as a Thru-Hiker! I bought a multicolored nalgene water bottle to support the museum and got some information about the fundraising banquet in mid-September, thinking “maybe if we’re done by then…”

After leaving the museum we said one last goodbye to Cindy; it had been so wonderful to spend time with her and Craig in Pine Grove Furnace State Park–thank you both so much for your generous hospitality!! We drove for about 45 minutes back to the Clarks Ferry Bridge outside Duncannon, and said a other goodbye to Nick and Leanne as they headed back home. Ladened with our full packs and feeling sluggish with the heat, Meadow and I crossed the sweltering highway and railroad tracks before returning to the cover of the forest on Peter’s Mountain. We had a relatively steep ascent waiting for us, which was made more difficult by the shifting rocks and blowdowns (fallen trees) across the trail. After a short while we passed a man with blue eyes and very large, even teeth wearing an olive green shirt and hiking pants and a blue Osprey backpack. He stopped to chat with us for a few short minutes with several awkwardly-long pauses before we mercifully went our separate ways. We hiked for several miles before I realized that we hadn’t eaten anything in quite some time, and we took a break in a wide open transmission line ROW to eat some granola bars and drink some water.

We hiked another several miles before reaching the Peter’s Mountain parking lot where there was a cooler with some gallons of water for hikers; we decided to skip taking any water since we knew we would need to filter water at our shelter anyway. We hiked for another few miles as the sun began to hang low in the sky. The Table Rock View afforded is a view of many deciduous trees and a big rock, which was still worth the short side trip down off the trail. The Peter’s Mountain Shelter was a gorgeous double-decker mansion, and we opted for the top loft. Frostbite and Smoke were eating dinner at the shelter when we arrived, and we caught up from the last few days as we cooked our own dinner. I had the tuna noodle casserole, which was tough to finish but I wasn’t about to waste any calories. Meadow offered to make the horrific trip down the mountainside to the spring to collect our water while I forced down the rest of my dinner, which was extremely kind. As the sun crept lower to the horizon it disappeared behind the clouds, turning the world gray as dusk approached. After drinking copious amounts of the fresh water we brushed our teeth and called it a night.

Thanks for stopping by!