Harpers Ferry - DONE! Sorta.

Aahh, yes that last post would be my father's - Thanks Papa, love the drawing! :)

I've just rolled into Harpers Ferry, WV!! And what a beautiful day to do it on. Arriving here marks the completion of the trail for me so it was a grrrRRREEAAAAAAT feeling walking in here and remembering when I got off an Amtrak train here to begin my first adventure a little over a year ago. Soooo cool.

So yeah, I've just completed the trail... I've walked the ENTIRE length of the Appalachian Trail... w o w... W O W! :) I'm lovin' it.

But I still haven't finished my thru-hike and am thouroughly looking forward to reliving last year's hike and seeing the South all over again! So many cool sights, places, and people to look forward to seeing! I'm psyched!

But tonight I'm going to stay at the Hilltop Hotel (hopefully they have a vacancy!!), enjoy the wonderful view from there, and reflect on it all before setting out again tomorrow - this time with a sense of familiarity that I've never had before. It's my victory lap, the icing on my already incredible cake of an adventure!

But yeah... so let's see what's happened since... DUNCANNON, PA - geez, seems like it's been a while since I've seen a computer. (Maybe because while I'm on the trail I remember there've been some people that I keep forgetting to get in touch with but haven't remembered to while in town!)

The spider bites are looking a whole lot better.. ended up spending 3 days in Duncannon. Bummer to kill time like that, especially because the weather was sooo beautiful (and of course it ended up raining upon my departure), but it wasn't so bad a place for it - lots of very friendly people! Put down a couple of pints of B&J's "Half baked" - perfect fit for PA, since the halfway point occurs there. Spent a bit of it reading the first half of "Apollo 13". Hikers tend to rip paperbacks into sections so they don't have to carry the whole book, so I was a little bummed to get into it only to finish it in the middle of a chapter. The guys have just moved over into the LEM and everybody on the ground's racing around trying to figure out how they're going to handle the abundance of CO2 that 3 astro's are going to produce vs. the 2 that the LEM was designed to handle!! Yeah, I saw the movie, but of course the book is better and I'm still on the edge! ;) Look forward to finishing that when I get home!

Saw a skunk for the first time in my life! And boy was the experience a trip! I'm hiking along and see this furry guy trotting towards me along the trail maybe a hundred feet or so down the trail. My first thought is: Cool!! Is this the porcupine that I haven't seen yet?? But almost as soon as I thought that I realized that it was furry, not full of quills.. so then in a scare, I though, Oh Crap, a skunk! But it didn't have the stripe all the way back and along its tail as I though they had and the way it was moving didn't seem very ... skunk-like, as if I know how a skunk walks (Pepe le peeuu??). So then I'm thinking, huh, wolverine, badger, hedgehog?? (so yeah, ok, maybe I should've brushed up on my naturalist books a bit before hitting the trail) But whatever it is, I get excited about it and I stop dead in my tracks hoping not to scare it away while I start getting my camera out. Changed a few settings hurredly expecting it to flee any second and cursing how long it's taking me to do this. So I get it all done and start taking pictures of it as it is still approaching me... and it continues approaching me... and continues.. wow, this guy either doesn't see me or really doesn't care who/what I am!! So when it gets about 10-15 ft away I start to step off the trail a few steps. Finally with that it stopped a second or two to look at me... (thinking maybe it was short-sided? only the noise of me stepping off the trail..? dunno) but then continued along its way right past me - getting to within maybe 3-5 ft away... just trottin' along the trail as if he owned the damn thing! SOooo funny!! I actually started chuckling out loud as I stepped back onto the trail watching it trot on down the trail... Sooo funny! But so yeah, it was a skunk after showing the pics to a few others and thinking about it some more.

Gotta go!! The ATC's closing up shop... not sure where I'll have access again!

Fool!