Save the best for last

Another long time since i've been able to update the blog. I've since crossed the states of New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts and now find myself in Vermont, Manchester city to be exact. I've completed 1640 miles and only have 540 to go!

The weather has been really two sided in the last 2 weeks. After my last update we had a severe storm (with a tornado warning!), and rain...lot's of rain. Which means progress was slow, because nobody wants to hike in the rain. In Connecticut we found a really cool hostel. It's called the 'Bearded Woods Hostel'. Basically it's someone's basement, but it's much cooler and less creepy then it sounds, trust me! They pick you up from the trail, give you dinner and breakfast, take care of your laundry and let you take showers. The food especially was amazing. 'Hudson', a previous thru-hiker, and his wife 'Big Lu' run it and they are awesome people! After that day it sort of stopped raining and the last week has been perfect hiking weather, not hot but no rain either.

Slowfoot giving the thumbs up for the Bearded Woods hostel

This is what I do when I get bored, I build mazes for caterpillars. 

Hikers taking shelter for the big storm

The oldest oak tree on the A.T.

Where the trail seemed to be getting a more solitary place in the mid Atlantic, it's now increasing in population again. This is mainly because of all the people that do the A.T. in the opposite direction. They all start at around the beginning of June so we are running into a lot of them now. This is a nice change, because we get to exchange information about the trail that lies ahead. Especially for us people going north it's an exciting time. In the next state (New Hampshire) we are going into the White mountains which should give some of the most spectacular views on the entire A.T.

Two Thirds and Badger enjoying the view on top of Bear Mountain, Connecticut.

Evening view with the moon

We have already been treated with a couple of nice views and I think the trail is definitely getting nicer and more challenging now. One of the shelters was particularly nice, it was called Upper Goose Pond Cabin. It was a shelter that was next to a huge pond where you could take kayaks out or go for a swim, it was awesome! There was also a caretaker that made pancakes in the morning. When I found out about the pancakes I was still 10 miles away and just about to put up my tent. But when I heard the word pancake I got my stuff and put in the extra miles! Well worth it!

View of Upper Goose Pond from the kayak

Here are some more pictures of the trail, I'm really looking forward to the last 500 miles of my great adventure, I hope I get to see more amazing stuff!

Highest point in Massachusetts, some cool tower thing. 

Looking at the A.T. It goes through this town and up that mountain

You do not realize how impressive this picture is, my camera viewing screen is broken
so this took me at least 10 tries to get right.

Waking up in a shelter with a nice sunrise

Nature!!!

Counting down

It's been a while since the last post, 400 miles to be exact. I am now in Pawling, New York and have only 700 miles to go to complete my journey and from now on I am counting down the miles!

I went through just a small number of towns in the last 250 miles, mainly because we have stopped fooling around and actually started doing a lot of miles, including a few 30 mile days. I've also been seeing less people then I did the first half of the trail. They say by this stage more then 70 % of the people that started the A.T. have dropped out for one reason or another.

So since the last time I blogged I have gone past the half way point off the A.T. Interestingly there are 3 halfway points on the actual trail. This is because the length of the total trail changes slightly every year and over the years it has changed a lot so there have been a couple of official halfway points in the form of signs on the trail. At one of the points there is a little museum and deli. At the deli there is a thing called the half gallon challenge, the idea being you hiked half the trail now eat half a gallon of ice cream (1.8 liters). I finished my ice cream in 9 minutes, which was a really good time apparently.

Me at the halfway point sign

The wooden spoon you got after finishing the half gallon challenge

After the half gallon challenge it was time to move on to the next state on the trail, it was Pennsylvania. It was a very different state because it was very flat and very rocky (it's nicknamed rocksylvania). We also crossed some cornfields, on one of which I got lost and found myself on a train track, where I flipped a coin to decide which way I should follow the tracks. I got lucky and after half a mile on the tracks I was in a little town that was right on the trail. It was in this town where I stayed in a place called Allenberry Resort. It was amazing. They let us stay there for $40 (King of the Hill and me) and the place had everything; good food, a pool, a game room, wifi and it really was like a resort. Apparently we got a very big hiker discount.

Another place where I stayed was Port Clinton, also in Pennsylvania. I stayed in the park where there was a big pavilion. There was a guy there by the name off "can-do will-do" driving people back and forth to Walmart and all the places to eat because otherwise you would have to walk on a highway for half a mile (not very safe obviously!). This was all very fine until we got pulled over by the police who told us we couldn't sit in the back of can-do will-do's pickup truck. He wasn't sure what law it was though so he let us off with a warning. After this the police started looking out for can-do will-do's truck so every time we would need a ride we would have to lie down in the back off his pick-up like a bunch of illegal immigrants being smuggled over the border, we laughed about it afterwards.

After Pennsylvania came New Jersey and New York. The trail here has a lot of lakes, beaches and deli's close by, which is very nice for us. The only downside to this is that everything is more expensive up north compared to the south of the U.S. so my wallet is not happy. 

I've also seen a lot of snakes on the trail. The rattlesnakes are a bit scary because they are poisonous and can get pretty aggressive other then that it's not that big of a deal.

I'm looking forward to the last part of the trail. There should be some more serious climbs coming up along with some amazing terrain and surroundings. Some more pictures bellow!

Shelter cat

'Nuclear Lake' needless to say I did not take a swim in this one

It's not all sunshine on the trail

Zoom in and find the huge ass rattlesnake

Less dangerous black snake

Getting closer to the end!

Tall Oaf and Slowfoot chilling at a rest stop

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

Brewblazing

Sorry for the long delay in posting, but computers have been hard to find on the trail. Anyway I am in Waynesboro, Virginia which is 850 miles along the trail. This means I am nearly at the halfway point of my adventure now.

I am still sticking with some of the guys I met during the first days of hiking. The main four being 'King of the Hill' from Kansas, 'Hotwheels' from Chigaco and 'Trooper' from Germany. Since the last time I posted we have really been picking up the pace, going atleast a 100 miles every week which means a lot of the people we hiked with are now behind us but we also caught up to a bunch of people that we hiked with in the smokey mountains which was a pleasant surprise.

Hiking has been a lot of fun in Virginia. The scenery is very beautifull and the terrain is very easy compared to earlier states. The only annoyance now are the bugs which have been biting me like crazy.

As a change of pace we decided to go off the trail a couple of days ago to find a beer brewery. The owner of the brewery let us stay in one of the buildings on his property. We had a lot of fun there, and the next day we found out there was a vineyard close by so we went there and got a free wine tasting. Needless to say it was a lot of fun. The title of this blog is brewblazing and I will explain that now for all non hikers following this blog. On the A.T. There are white blazes on the trees as markers to indicate you are on the A.T. Now there are also blue blazes which are side trails that lead away from the A.T. or sometimes take you to a shortcut. When you are walking on those you are 'blueblazing'. Out of this came a whole range of types of blazing. For instance there is yellowblazing which you do if you go part of the trail by car. So we thought of our own for the brewery, 'brewblazing'.

For the next 50 miles we will be canoeing ('aquablazing') up the Shenandoah river. This will take 3 days, afterwards we will hitchhike back to Waynesboro and hike back on the A.T. And when I get to the halfway point (which is in about 2 weeks) I plan to take a few days off in Washington D.C. which I am looking forward to.

ALSO I SAW MY FIRST BEAR 4 DAYS AGO. BOOYAH!

A man let us sleep in his Dojo. It was awesome.

Wine tasting

More wine tasting/drinking

Ok, bye bye then.