Bears, beers and goodbyes

It's been hard trying to find library with an actual computer and not something made out of wood. But at last a new blog update! Since the last update I've completed another 200 miles of my trip putting me at 1040 miles, which is 40 miles from the official halfway point! Although I would say mentally the halfway point was about 500 miles ago (trail days in Damascus), because the last 500 miles seem to have flown by very quickly. Pretty much all of the last 500 miles have been in the state Virginia, which I think has been easier then the states previous to it. Virginia had a lot to offer though, going through a couple of national and state parks including Shenandoah national park, where I saw a total of 9 bears. But because bears are wimps and run away very quickly I don't have any good pictures (I even tried chasing one to get a good picture), see below for the best bear pictures.

In my last blog post I announced that there was going to be some aquablazing and there was. We started our canoeing adventure somewhere in the middle of nowhere (It's a good thing rivers have a flow making them one way traffic because otherwise we would have definately gotten lost) and ended in the town of Shenandoah, which was about 20 miles down the river. They said you would be able to do 50 miles in 3 days but there where a lot of beers that needed drinking so we only made it 20 miles. We had 3 canoes between the six of us. Besides the usual 4 of us (Me, King of the Hill, Trooper and Hotwheels) we met up with Badger and Squishy a couple of days before we decided to aquablaze and they decided to go with us. Trooper came up with the brilliant idea of buying eachother gifts we had to carry during the 3 days of canoeing, we then picked names randomly out of a hat and gave that person the gift. I ended up giving squishy the following clock. I got a nice hoola outfit in return. Some of the other gifts you can see below as well.

Ready for some canoeing!

Straight to buisness

Notice the clock, my gift to squishy

Waking up, realising you slept in a cow field (cow in background)

On day two our canoe Trooper and Hotwheels tried to sabotage me and squishy's boat by ramming it in one of the rapids (they claimed it was an 'accident' pfff), but the attempt failed and they capsized their own boat (haha!). Because water was going everywhere they quickly tried getting their backpacks and stuff in our canoe, which in turn made our canoe capsize (grrr). We had a laugh about it afterwards until we realized we lost all the beer in the rapids.... All in all the aquablazing was a lot of fun and a real nice escape from the trail.

Drying our stuff after tipping the canoes

After coming back on the trail I hiked another 100 miles or so before arriving in Harper's ferry (what everybody basically calls the halfway point) and King of the Hill and me went to Washington D.C. for three days. It was a lot of fun, especially the museums because they where all free. The air and space museum was my favorite. I was also exited to see the Lincoln memorial, unfortunately it did not have a monkey's head like in the Planet of the Apes movie. It was also hotter then sitting in our old Volvo with no airconditioning in Washington, I think the temperature reached 104 Fahrenheit (40 celcius). I will upload picture of D.C. some other time, or on facebook. Here are some more random pictures.

I guess that's the end then

Thanks for the nice pose badger



Approaching storm



snake!

Past a 1000 miles!

Trooper doesn't care about the rules!

Last but not least Harper's ferry was the end destination for one of my hiking buddies. Trooper was leaving us to go back to germany and his job (he only planned to do half of the trail). We tried finding out where he works so we could get him fired so he could stay but it didn't work. Goodbye Trooper!

The team of 4 still together after 1000 miles!
from left to right: Trooper, King of the Hill, Jiffy Pop (me), Hotwheels