BACK FROM BACKPACKING (you gotta read this story and see these pictures)

MMMmmmm, it was wonderful! I would have been happy to go another day. Or two. Or 150.

Eight miles yesterday, overnight in my tent in the rain (stayed dry this time) eight miles back today. It was hot, hiking. I sweated like crazy. It felt great. Mountain laurel is in bloom.

Yesterday I got tired early, and my backpack didn't feel good. Felt like I'd been hiking for hours (and in fact I had) when I passed a landmark that my guide book said was 3 miles from my starting point. 3 miles???? In 3 hours???? I've got 5 miles (5 hours?) to go??? GACKKK!!!


The good news was that I'd hiked all the way to the next state already.

Almost as soon as I hit the trail, I met up with a man named Ray who was hiking from Front Royal, VA to Maine. We hiked together some; now and then one or the other of us would take a break or go ahead, but we kept catching up to each other. Shortly after that 3-mile place, we met up again and stayed together after that. We talked a lot about grown kids, grandkids, books, and of all things, hiking, and the miles went faster.



View from an outcropping:

Is it any wonder I love this Trail?

There were actually quite a few thru-hikers (northbound having started in Georgia.) I needn't have worried about being alone (the reason I took Journey, so I wouldn't have to camp alone overnight.) Here are, left to right, Ronja, a Swiss Mountain Dog who thru-hiked with her owner Rhino from Georgia to Maine a couple years ago and is doing it a second time; Ronja's German owner, Rhino; Bad Idea (I love that Trail Name) petting Journey; Byron, who doesn't use a Trail Name. All of us, including Ray, ate lunch together beside a stream.

Ronja takes full advantage of the rest stop. She's an experienced hiker and knows the ropes.

I noticed that Journey, a gen-u-wyne mongrel pound-hound, looks almost identical to Ronja, a gen-u-wyne Swiss Mountain Dog. Several people I met asked if "Journey" is Journey's real name or her Trail Name.

During the night it poured rain a couple times. After my last rainy campout, I'd sealed my tent seams and sprayed it with Scotchgard Outdoor spray, and I stayed dry as a bone. Journey, my pack/gear, and I barely fit inside but we figured it out. Journey slept between my feet.

For my return trip, I redistributed the stuff in my pack, doing away with firmly-compressed cylinders of sleeping bag, sleeping pad, and groundcloth, just piling all loosely into the pack (except the pad, which I folded instead of rolling) and letting them vie for space until they had filled in all the voids. The tent went on the outside, since it was wet. Everything fit a lot better and my pack felt lighter and rode immeasurably better.

Here's just a pretty stretch of trail on the way home:

It rained a little, off and on. I tried something new this trip: an umbrella, instead of rain jacket. I loved it!

And back into Virginia, which meant 3 miles left to go.

I went a lot faster than on the way out, not that speed is an issue, it just shows how much more comfortable I was after repacking. On the other hand, it turned out to be an issue after all, because I'd been hearing distant thunder, and after another mile or so it was getting closer. The rain started just as I reached my car. By the time I had Journey and my pack in, the storm was in full force and I decided not to drive in it, and waited it out in the parking lot. Wow!! Serious driving rain, trees whipping back and forth, lightning striking all around -- I could see the strikes nearby. I was glad I wasn't still out on the Trail and thought about hikers I'd seen just recenly that I knew were getting clobbered.


Finally it let up and I drove out to the highway. Uh-oh:

And this is only one of them. They were everywhere. I was wise to wait it out, or I'd have been on this road when they came down.

Oh, no, traffic at a standstill:

One impatient driver trying to go around the tie-up:

Fire fighters clearing the mess:

Gee whillikers, I hope the hikers that got caught out there are OK.

Traffic inched along getting nowhere for about 20 minutes. Then a woman with an umbrella came towards the line of cars with a report: Trees and power lines down over the next mile, time estimate 2-3 hours to clear. Luckily I was near a side road and turned off. I didn't know where it went but guessed I could figure out the general direction and end up back out on the highway and/or back in Winchester.

A couple hundred yards in on the side road, I came upon this. Holy smoke. Can you see there's a friggin' TRUCK in there???

It was in an otherwise-deserted parking lot, and I pulled in and looked inside.... no one in there. Thank goodness:

Just ironically.... this is the facility in whose parking lot this occurred:

The local TV news comes out of Washington, D.C. Although they had no reports of storm damage in the Berryville, VA area, there was a confirmed tornado touchdown east of D.C. where *jeanne* lives. I called her but wasn't able to get an answer. I left voicemails on her home and cell phones. *jeanne*, are you OK???


I don't think it was a tornado that we had here, because the trees that were down were all lying the same direction, and there was no swath of destruction. I've seen tornado damage before; I think this was straight-line wind in a ferocious thunderstorm, maybe a microburst.

So I'm back, after a glorious backpacking trip followed by excitement (I don't want anyone go get hurt, and I feel really bad for the owner of the truck), but..... a good storm is one of the things I really like, right up there with a good hike.)


Things I learned on this trip:

• It's better to wait out a nasty storm.


• My stuff fits in my backpack more nicely when it's not all compressed into a bunch of hard, cylindrical lumps.


• I use an amazing amount of water in camp.


• It's hard to look out for a dog while hiking.... looking after oneself is quite enough.


• Check more scrupulously for ticks: I pulled on off my scalp after a shower AND shampoo this evening... and I'd worn a hat the whole time hiking.


• Although there are many AT hikers, a very small percent are women. I met one. She was section-hiking, started in Georgia 5 years ago; lives in San Diego, comes east once a year, picks up where she left off, and hikes another section. She seemed my age or maybe 5 years older.


• I love an umbrella for hiking and camping in the rain.


• I love hiking, backpacking, and camping. But we knew that already, didn't we?

PRACTICE HIKE

We needed a few groceries. The store is a couple miles away, maybe 3.

I ran over, and walked back, with the groceries in my daypack.

I've been on a 2-week hiatus from running and biking, to rest and build myself up. I did break down and run 3 miles the morning of the wedding but other than that I've been layin' low.

Why fire up the diesel-guzzling truck to go to the store 2 or 3 miles away for groceries that will easily fit in my backpack? And when I need to learn to shop for things that will go in a backpack, when I do food re-supply trips on the AT?

Instead of a shopping cart, I carried one of those hand-baskets, to keep tabs on how much weight I was accumulating.

Here's what easily went into the pack, with room (and weight) to spare:

Half a gallon of milk
A dozen eggs
4-lb. bag of sugar
1-lb. bag of dry beans
Stick of deodorant
Wedge of Brie cheese
Box of 20 garbage bags
12-pack of Pop-Tarts
2 PayDay bars (buy one, get one free)
Loaf of French bread (in side pocket to keep from getting smashed)

It was easy, I saved fuel and money, burned up some calories, and started something new for myself:

If it's 3 miles or less, I'm going on foot.

Later, I'll up that to 4 miles.

Why drive when I can run and/or walk?

BE STILL

From author Adrienne Hall in her book A Journey North:

"After three months on the Appalachian Trail...I learned to hear a single leaf twist and rustle its neighbor...I learned to hear stillness and tried to find that stillness in myself. Tenderly I nurtured it, hoping that the peace and calm of the woods would grow inside me too."

Yes, that stillness.... let it be; let it be in me.

A HIKER BY ANOTHER NAME

I returned today from another overnight backpacking trip, during which I met some hikers walking from Georgia to Maine, as I had hoped to. My readers may or may not realize that long-distance trail hikers, especially AT thru-hikers, often go by a "trail name," sort of like a CB handle. Some people make up their own, or even use their real name, but fellow hikers often replace these "temporary" names with something else, generally representative of a characteristic of the person, or spawned by some memorable event, and you just hope it's not too embarrassing because it's likely to stick and be the name by which all other hikers know you.

I went into the woods Against the Wind, and came out....

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Begin "Hallelujah Chorus" here....

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MacGyver!

This came about at an Appalachian Mountain Commission-maintained campsite/shelter where I spent the night. With 5 guys :-) (There are 5 tent platforms, so we each had our own.)

We were all eating our suppers together, and one of the guys, trail-named "Spock," was intrigued, or impressed, or amused, by my homemade cooking equipment. My cooking pot is a practically-weightless, no-cost, 1-lb coffee can, with a tight-fitting pot lid made from aluminum foil reinforced with foil tape, supported over my soda-can stove with tent stakes, and.... this was the final straw for Spock.... a pot-lifter/handle that is, in fact, a dog-grooming tool, a shedding blade.

It's a flexible metal blade with a sawtooth edge, a leather handle at each end, and a fastener to hold these together so that the blade forms a loop. I had been using it for Journey one day and suddenly looked at it and wondered, "I'll bet that would fit my coffee can." I tried it. It did. It's perfect. No more carrying potholders or trying to use a bandana for one. I roll it into a tight circle and store it in my coffee-can pot. So Spock saw me pull all this stuff out of my pot, and gaped at the shedding blade, and said,

"Please tell me that's not a pot handle."

"It's a pot handle," I said, fastening it around my pot to show him.

"What is it made to be?" he asked.

"A dog-grooming tool," I explained. "See this sawtooth edge? You pull it along the dog's coat and it pulls out the dead undercoat. I was using it on my dog and had a lightbulb moment. I figured I can use it as a saw, too."

He threw back his head and laughed, "Your name's gotta be MacGyver!!"

I love it!! I'm crazy about it! Especially since Spock has made a lot of his gear, too, including his backpack (which is awesome), and his calling me MacGyver showed appreciation for my ingenuity.

"Against the Wind" has been great for marathoning, and triathlon, and Ironman. It sounds like pressing on through challenge and even adversity. But it's kind of long to use for a name I'll actually be called by, and it's maybe a little pessimistic, always struggling a little.

MacGyver... the secret agent who sees a new use for something, rigs up something improbable from something ordinary, rises to the occasion, gets out of scrapes by being inventive.

A Trail Name that I love, bestowed like an award by a thru-hiker on his way to Maine, a seasoned hiker of many trails.... how good can it get?

I love it.

MAJOR THREADS SCORE!!!

 

WHOA!!!! Our neighbor, another full-time RV'er work-camper, is leaving and moving on to the next gig, and she's downsizing her stuff,and gave me a DOWN JACKET!! LONDON FOG!! I've made it through the chilly (some single digits F*) Norther Virginia winter with just my jean jacket and my IMFL microfiber jacket. Whoo! I have NEVER had a down jacket before!

And fleece-lined jeans! Gap! I have never bought jeans from Gap, nor have I ever had lined jeans.

We'll be landing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire early in May. I've been on a "Backpacking the White Mountains" website that warns hikers to have WARM clothes, even in "warm" weather. I'm ready!!