Half Way(ish) There!

I rolled into Harper's Ferry around lunchtime today, 2 days and 3 hours after leaving Front Royal.  HUGE thank-you to cousin Paul and his wife Susan for the amazing hospitality in Front Royal!

I get in a hurry when I'm getting rained on almost constantly.  Did I mention the rain? It's wet.  Three waves of storms have passed through in the past couple of days, and a good bit of my hiking has been splashing through mud and submerged trail.

But I'm here and fed, doing laundry and getting a hot shower, inside for this evening's round of storms.

And I'm about HALF WAY to Katadin.  Not exactly -- technically about 25 miles short -- but this is considered to be the "psychological midpoint" of the trail.  The Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the "headquarters" of the AT, is here for that reason.

Made it to ATC!
(Yes, those are paracord suspenders; I'm 144 lbs.)

I'm glad I made it this far, and I'm looking forward to heading north in a few days.  New items before I go, though:  pants that fit (current ones are too small after the weight loss and are held up with suspenders fashioned out of orange paracord) and new shoes.  My trusty Saucony running shoes made it this far, and that's more than I could reasonably ask.

Shoes are pretty well used up.

Treadworn; really slipping on rocks.

But first, I'm taking a few days off to visit the Udvar-Hazy Center in D.C. to gawk at one of the finest collections of historic aircraft in the world with my brother.  So expect the content here to change from outdoors to aviation hardware briefly.  Mwahahaha!