Venango Villa

I recently had the joy of walking through unfamiliar trees when a line from a Robert Frost poem returned to me: "Whose woods these are I think I know."  The answer came like an angels' song: Mine!  These woods are mine.  This is Venango Villa, alternately known as the dacha, the cabin, or just "camp."  I have finally achieved my lifelong goal to have a place in the forest and to own a little bit of woods.  It's very close to MY forest, the Allegheny National Forest.  It's also within the bounds of the county of my birth and very near to a little town where my father's family is originally from.  The two times that I backpacked in the immediate vicinity of this location, I heard wood thrushes in the evening and owls at night.  This is a beautiful place.  It feels strangely satisfying and appropriate to own 1.8 acres of the Fatherland, though I'd have bought a getaway in almost any stretch of woods within a 2.5 hour drive of Pittsburgh.  The humble house in this photo came available, and I did not buy it because of historical connections to the area, though those are cool.  I bought it just because I wanted a place in the woods.  Venango Villa is 2 hours away if I drive as fast as most people--which I only do when headed for the forest.

This little mobile home popped up last September on a Facebook group where people advertise hunting camps for sale in the "Pennsylvania Wilds."  The Wilds is a vaguely-defined region where there are few people and lots of black bears.  There are vast expanses of woodlands and some elk, too.  This is at the westernmost edge of the Wilds, but it is truly wild around here...and a little spooky at night.  Here's a shot of the villa at sunset.  (Of course, I'm being ironic when I call it that.)  A widow lady used to live here alone.  It was her year-round home, and she died somewhere on the premises.  I intend to ask the nearest neighbors about her after I get to know them better.  I don't believe in ghosts or cryptids, but click on this photo to enlarge it.  Do you not see a greenish orb in the trees just in front of the house?

Most of the old clapboard churches, like this one, sit empty but maintained.  You can rent this church for events like concerts or family reunions.  I have seen the hunting camps come and go on the Facebook page where I found the Venango Villa.  They get snapped up so fast that I never even thought I had a chance of getting one.  Everyone seems to be looking for camps and second homes these days.  But this place felt different.  It called to me.  My wife was so supportive and totally on board with buying it--although she had never even seen it.  Her dad is a contractor, so I took him up to look it over.  The place was crawling with potential buyers on a Sunday afternoon.  My father-in-law gave it the thumbs up, and after a lot of negotiating and nearly walking away from the purchase, it's finally ours.    

It was really cheap.  No one wants those old mobile homes anymore, even when they come with almost 2 acres of woods.  Mine has a porch and mudroom built on and a full basement!  The basement is what sold me.  How many hunting camps have those?  It's got a well and a septic system--of some kind.  My wife still hasn't been up there to see it yet, but her willingness to buy the place "sight-unseen" has earned her MAJOR points.  (That could have been part of her plan, but it worked.  We've all got our price, right?)  The whole family is going up Thanksgiving night.  I spent Friday night and all-day Saturday up there cleaning, putting up curtains, fixing things, raking leaves, and doing odd jobs around the place.  I also spent a lot of time exploring the environs, where there are many seldom-visited second homes and hunting camps, like this place.  Of course, this is what I originally had in mind--a log cabin with an outhouse and a big front porch, sitting on a dirt road with no neighbors for miles.  It's probably heated with a wood stove and has a hand pump for water.  But my wife never would have agreed to that kind of primitive camp.  Relationships entail compromise.

This is the Allegheny River as seen from the lookout above Tidioute, a picturesque but hardscrabble village on the river.  The dirt-road drive from the villa down to Tidioute is beautiful and lonely, mostly downhill, passing through deep forests on steep grades.  I know some Pittsburghers who built a second home up here in the 1970s, and they always call this place "the mountains."  They spend their summers "up at the mountains."  I always want to correct them.  These are not the mountains.  The Appalachian Mountains are a long range of ridges that stand well to the east of this place--many miles from here.  But these do feel like mountains when you're driving through them.  They're steep and rugged and covered in trees, with rare but occasional long views.  Many of the ridges are above 1,000 feet, so they are technically mountains.  But how?  They're far from any mountain range.  These hills just stand around wherever they want in total disorder all over the northern part of the state.

Here are the northern reaches of the town of Tidioute.  My grandfather used to say that in the 1700s a trapper here had a Seneca wife who went around topless, and that's why they called the town Tidioute.  Like a lot of these old hill country villages, Tidioute is both scenic and grimy, with grand old mansions in varying degrees of disrepair and ornate churches sitting empty.  Tidioute also has the river.

The villa sits in the hills above Tidioute, where the land levels out a little bit, but remains almost entirely wooded.  Here's one open spot along one of the many, many dirt back roads in the area.  Like I said, there's something almost eerie about being closed in by endless trees.  I love the company of trees, but an open place like this has a real appeal when you've been surrounded by gray trunks and bare branches for a few days.  Most of the woods around here have No Trespassing signs on the trees, which might indicate that they belong to city folk who only come up here on occasion to hunt and get away from their crowded lives.  These folks didn't even need to build a cabin; they settled for a camper.

Now, I want to get this on the record: I told the real estate agent that I did not want to buy this house if someone needed it as a place to live.  For me, it's just a place to go and play, but if someone needed it for a home, then I wanted them to have it, not me.  Housing is expensive these days, and I don't know how rural people get by.  If you live out here, a car is a necessity--with insurance, and gas, and maintenance, and all the unexpected expenses that come with vehicle-ownership.  Grocery stores are few and far between, though there's a Dollar General in every village.  You can buy groceries at Dollar General, but not of a healthy variety.  For fresh produce or meat, you've got to drive into one of the bigger towns or else grow it yourself.  Housing prices are an issue out here, too--though far less expensive than in urban areas.  It doesn't help that suburbanites like me would come up here and buy all the affordable property.  But the real estate agent assured me that no one who needed a home would be able to make a cash offer, which the seller required, so my conscience could rest easy.  Here is one of the many single-lane dirt roads runs through the trees, sometimes growing so rutted and narrow that I'm afraid to travel on them.

My hometown of Oil City, as seen from above.  Seen here is the site of the now-defunct Pennzoil refinery, along Oil Creek.  My grandfather--of Tidioute fame--used to work here loading barrels onto trucks.  They were always poor, my Oil City grandparents.  Grandma never worked outside the home...and honestly, not much inside the home either.  She never learned how to drive, so after work grandpa would have to drive her to the grocery store, where he would wait in the car while she bought cartons of Kraft macaroni and cheese.  Grandma was an unhappy woman with bad religion to make her misery complete.  She spent her days watching soap operas and feeling guilty about it because her preacher said that was a sin.  When she wasn't watching daytime television, she was talking to her sister on the phone.  She was a hypochondriac who famously caught hepatitis over the phone.  I think she hated us, but our other grandma ADORED us, and she felt the need to keep up.  She did the bare minimum that's expected of a grandma: birthday cards containing $5 bills, clip-on ties for Christmas.  That's it.  My cousins here mostly died young.  I have no one left here except one cousin, an aunt and an uncle.  I haven't seen them in many years, but I expect that will change now.

It's weird to be back within the orbit of this town.  

Greene County - The Most Haunted County in America? (Also Photo Dumps for Out-of-State Adventures)

I took an ill-fated drive down to Greene County today, my day off.  I've made October trips to Greene County, PA, ever since I learned that Martha Stewart Magazine called it one of the best places in the US for fall foliage.  A recent book, which I plan to purchase, claims that it is the most haunted county in America.  Ghosts, cryptids, unexplained phenomena.  I don't believe in any of it, but it's fun to pretend.  This time around, I went looking for the monument at the southwesternmost corner of the state, which I never found.  I ended up getting a little lost on country lanes.  I did stray across the unmarked Mason Dixon Line and into West Virginia, where the already narrow roads became somehow steeper, and narrower, with longer drops to the sides.  No idea what I'd have done if there'd been a vehicle coming toward me on one of those roads.  (The one pictured here in in PA and wide by comparison.)  I wended through Littleton, WV, which has the lowest per capita income in the state at $6,034, and perhaps the lowest in the nation.  Whereas folks tend to be friendly and welcoming in most of the Mountain State, the people around Littleton did not look pleased to see a gay-looking little white Kia with PA plates!  The did not return my affable West Virginia two-finger-off-the steering-wheel-salute.  They just stared with eyes hard-set.

Anyhow, HERE is a link to a more pleasant quadrant of West Virginia: a backpacking trip at Dolly Sods over Indigenous Peoples' Day weekend.

HERE is a link to a jumbled and random photo dump of our busy summer full of domestic and international travel, including Mexico, Panama and Costa Rica.

And HERE is a September trip to the old "lunatic asylum" in Weston, WV, which is creepy!

 

Fall Days

It's been a pretty October.  Not brilliant like last year, but better than a lot of Octobers in recent years.

Sadly, I've been too preoccupied to get out much on my days off--what few I have.  But I did make a run out to Raccoon Creek to see the fall colors.

We're buying property at last up near the Allegheny National Forest!  Just a little hunting camp, though I don't hunt.  So I think my leisure days will be more and more northwardly focused.

Plus, my older daughter is going to college up that way, so that's another northward draw.

She was home the weekend before last, so we went into the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh.  I often duck into Heinz Chapel while I'm out that way.

The Chief Cornplanter window.

While at Raccoon Creek, I collected some wild walnuts--which are a chore to get out of their spicy-smelling green husks.  On the right are the walnuts as you find them on the ground.  The green husks smell a little like citrus.  You have to wear rubber gloves to get the nuts out because the husks will stain your hands, and the color won't come off for weeks.  After removing the nuts, which you see on the left, they have to sit for about 3 weeks before you can shell them.

Processing the walnuts in our backyard, this squirrel became oddly assertive!  He chittered and scolded and got way closer than a squirrel should.  I thought it would be a wonderful idea to trap the squirrel and take it elsewhere---a few miles away, so it would let me process my walnuts in peace.  I put a walnut in the cage-trap and within minutes I had a captive squirrel.  Sharper fangs and claws I've not seen on a beast.  Of course, as soon as I'd caught the little feller, the complexity of the situation dawned on me.  What do I do with it?  I ended up taking it 6 miles away and setting it free with the three nuts to give it a headstart on building a new home for the winter.  It never occurred to me that it could have been a mother with a drey full of babies to feed....

70-Mile Thru-Hike on the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail

I arrived at the northern trailhead on a gloomy Saturday afternoon.  I was beginning the trail at milestone 70 and making my way south to milestone 0.  A car full of rowdy kids pulled up just behind me, and I scurried into the woods to get ahead of their noise and hopefully escape it--thus passing by the trail register untouched.  Little did I know that when I returned to my car a week later, I would find the battery dead.  But I did it.  I walked 70 miles entirely under my own power.  I'm a thru-hiker!

The 70-mille trek was not off to an auspicious start.  Bugs were swarming, and within the first mile--which is easily the shortest-seeming mile on the trail--it had begun to rain.  Hard.  I surrendered myself to the rain and hoped that the rainfly would protect those things in my pack that needed to stay dry.  I arrived at the slightly spooky Route 56 Shelter Area after just five uphill miles during which time there was no visibility whatsoever due to the rain and fog.  I was the only camper in the campgrounds that night, which had its own kind of fun and spookiness to it.  But my sleeping bag was wet, so I ended up having an unexpected fire the next morning, while waiting for the rain to let up.  It gave my bag a chance to dry before setting off for a second day on the trail.  That fire set a precedent, and though I had not planned on it, I ended up having one every day.

I figured out a better way to protect my sleeping bag and other things inside my pack for another rainy day.  And again I abandoned myself to the elements.  But the morning fire was such a joy.  It made a nice companion on that first morning in the highland forests--watching the soft rain in the foggy woodlands all around, sipping coffee, waiting for my things to dry, and revisiting an old, old friend:

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, by Howard Pyle.  This is the Barnes & Noble Classics edition with original illustrations by the author.  It's the classic old text of Robin Hood with the "thees" and "thous" and the memorable terms of my childhood, like "I'll crack thy knave's pate!"  I've been wanting to revisit some of the books that influenced and inspired me as a child, and as my 70-mile thru-hike drew near, it occurred to me that, long before The Lord of the Rings, Robin Hood was the first book that made me want to live in the forest.  The B&N classic edition even includes the sad epilogue where Robin dies.  I don't know how modern children read this book, or even if they do.  I wouldn't have been able to read it as a child if I hadn't been brought up with the old King James Bible.  And yet, although it weighed almost two pounds, it was the perfect forest companion.

On my second day, Sunday, I had to cover 8 miles of trail to the Route 271 Shelter Area--where my younger daughter and I camped out some years ago.  It was sweetly sentimental to come across those places in the woods where I had hiked with her on a lost October day that seems so long ago.  She was so happy to have me all to herself--while her mother and sister were in Norway!  It was only, what, five years ago, but she was so much smaller, and sweeter, and more innocent than she's ever been since.  When I recognized the little bench at milestone 61 where she and I sat, you couldn't blame me for shedding an unobserved tear for the passing of time.  And not just time.  Other things have passed, things I could not know how to name--just as gone as an October day five years ago.

Here again I had the shelter area (campground) all to myself.  This place was no less spooky for its vague familiarity.  But here again, I made myself a home in the wilderness and a cozy fire for company--along with my childhood friend, Robin Hood.  On the first half of the trip, it was necessary to have a fire every night to dry out my Janner boots, which gave up all pretense of being waterproof.  On the second half of the trip, I just made fires out of habit and for the joy of them.

Up till this point, I took very few photos along the trek because it was too wet to pull out my phone.  On Monday I had 10.5 miles to cover, which made it my longest day on the trail thus far--though not my biggest day on the trail by the end of it.  This segment of the trail crossed the area where the helldiver World War II fighter jet crashed in 1945.  [For full coverage of that discovery, CLICK HERE.]  So it's an area that I'd explored pretty thoroughly in the spring.  I found myself hurrying through familiar territory once again, when I came upon old milestone 51 much like an old friend.  In fact, it was at this point along the trail that I decided to rally my random trail thoughts toward disciplined meditation.  With each milestone I passed, I tried to ruminate upon my life when I was the age of the number on the mile-marker.  It became a meaningful practice along the Laurel Highlands Trail, and I was grateful for the regular mile markers.  (Miles 49 thru 45 provided the richest fodder for consideration...)

Okay, so I'll tell a truth on myself: here in the 50s, I strayed from the trail a bit and followed a pipeline road I know that runs parallel to the trail.  It was easier walking, and it passed through fewer dead trees.  In fact, the number of dead and dying trees along the trail was alarming.  I've known of three individuals who lost their lives when a dead tree shed a heavy branch at just the wrong moment.  I found a Werther's candy there on that muddy road, and I was sorely tempted.  The wrapper seemed intact.  But then I noticed it was sugar free.  Temptation abated....

Here's the pleasant forest road that runs very near to the trail.  I met two rangers from the Game Commission out here in their big black SUV.  I asked them about the dead trees, and they said the same thing a park ranger would say to me a few days later: "Dead trees?  Huh.  I hadn't noticed."  

How could you not notice?  So much of the forest looked like this!  It was eerie and disturbing.  I was relying on the "tree-tunnel" to keep me in the shade for the duration of the hike, but there was far more sun on the forest floor than there should have been.

This little tic-tac-toe board is a well-known trail landmark.

After a long, hard uphill climb, I was rewarded with a sign for the Forbes Road.  In this spot, the trail crossed a narrow mud lane which was part of the original road that General Forbes hacked into the forest between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh (then Fort Duquesne) in 1758.  It's a joy to touch the past.  

In this first week of July, the mountain laurel had mostly faded, though it still adorned the occasional bows here and there. This is the state flower of Pennsylvania.  

Monday had been the longest day on the trail thus far, and the driest, but it was still plenty wet, and I had to dry my boots beside the fire.  My clothes were getting nasty right quickly.  Although I had the Route 30 Shelter Area all to myself, I did receive my first visit from a park ranger there that night.  The same friendly fellow would find me again the following night at my next camp.

Although I only met with a little bit of rain on Tuesday--the July 4th holiday--the trails were SOAKED.  I passed by the familiar Beam Rocks and was surprised to find the modest overlook completely abandoned to the sky and to me.  This spot can get quite crowded.  I've had it to myself on occasion, but expected there to be revelers there on the 4th.  Before arriving in the hard-won Turnpike Shelter Area, there were spots where I actually had to take off my hiking boots and carefully tread through the bogs barefoot.  The painfully cold water felt marvelous on my hot, blistered feet!  

Once again, I had the entire campground all to myself...but there was evidence that someone had been there the night prior.  Trail Magic!  This is what they call it on the Appalachian Trail.  It's when a stranger leaves treats and gifts for any random hiker to enjoy.  

The givers had a Jesus-loves-you message attached to their offerings, and the folks who first benefited from the Trail Magic left a note of gratitude.  I wanted to leave a snarky note about how loaves and fishes would be a more convincing form of magic if Jesus was the source.  But it seemed a little less than grateful to return kindness with blasphemy.  I ate a Little Debbie and a few small bags of chips.  I would have loved to take the big bag of corn chips and the jars of salsa, but I had my biggest day ahead of me on Wednesday and needed no extra weight in my bag, which was already overloaded with dampness.  If anyone in those mountains was celebrating Independence Day with fireworks, I did not hear them over the two small brooks that converged just outside my shelter.

Oh, and a cigar.  The evangelistic trail magicians left a lot of mini-bags of chips, a package of Little Debbies, some Mountain Dew and Cokes (neither of which I could drink in the evening due to high caffeine content), two jars of salsa, corn chips, and a cigar... Thank you, trail magicians.  It was a kind gesture.

Wednesday, the day I had been dreading!  On Wednesday I planned to skip the Route 31 Shelter Area and go directly 14 miles to the Grindle Ridge Shelter Area, where I would be joined by a friend who wanted to hike with me briefly.  On the map, it claimed that I had a 14-mile day ahead of me.  When all was said and done, my pedometer told me I'd walked 17 miles--and this with 40 pounds on my back.  Now, click on this photo to enlarge it.  Here's a piece of a dead tree that's fallen on the trail.  It's not so hard to step over, but if you and the deadwood happen to be in motion in the same spot at the same time?  Deadly.

In many ways, Wednesday was the turning point of the trek.  It was the first fully dry day I had.  I crossed the footbridge over the Pennsylvania Turnpike--a bridge that I've pointed out to my family every time we've driven under it.  And south of the turnpike bridge, the character of the forest grew more open and airier.  This was in part surely due to the decimated forest canopy.  Some weird blight is destroying the leaves on both sides of the bridge.  But there was a lighter quality to the air as well.

I felt a little self-congratulatory as I crossed the midway point of the 70-mile trail--milestone 35!  I stopped for one hour at the Route 31 Shelter Area to put up my hammock, have lunch, and rest in the middle of my longest trail day.  At the entrance to the shelter area, I met Dane Cook--author of the one and only guidebook abut the Laurel Highlands Trail.  He was talking to a reporter from the Johnstown Tribune Democrat about an article that the man is writing on the trail.  I asked them about the scraggly condition of the trees, and they too said, "Huh.  I hadn't noticed."  

But I still had a long day ahead of me, and it was a hot one.  I had no trouble at all finding sufficient water sources anywhere along the trail (even north of PA highway 30, which is infamously dry).  Wednesday saw me crossing the strange ups-and-downs near the Seven Springs Resort, and then entering the grounds of the resort for several miles of the trek.  

It is a little surprising to come upon horses pasturing in the woods.

At almost 3,000 feet, Seven Springs is the highest point along the LHHT.

You get some long views out over the ski slopes, abandoned for the summer.

For some reason, crossing Seven Springs felt like the longest leg of the trip.  I didn't have time to find their famous convenience store and buy modern amenities, though that would have been fun.  My brief town day would come on the following day when my friend and I took his car into Donegal to purchase necessities.

It's quite a long uphill haul to the Grindle Ridge Shelter Area from the resort.  Here at last I camped for the first time with other hikers in the campground.  My friend had hiked up from the Route 653 Shelter Area, near which he'd parked.  He and I would hike back that direction the next day to find his car and make a brief town run.  But this was the second half of the journey, and everything was different.  I was no longer alone at camp.  I was no longer soaked.  I had company and neighbors.  It was nice.

I stumbled into the shelter area on Wednesday night as physically drained as I'd felt since I climbed Mt. Columbia last summer in Colorado.  (Mt. Columbia is my first and only 14er thus far.)  Grindle Ridge might be my favorite shelter area, though it would grow old with the Seven Spring clay pigeon shooting range so close-by.  I didn't care.  I washed some of my reeking clothes with a bar of soap in a cold little brook that tumbled steeply off the rocks by our shelter, and I took a frigid and very restorative bath there, too.  My feet ached terribly, and the blisters were crippling.

On Thursday's short 5.5 mile hike to the Route 653 Shelter Area, my friend and I passed through deep rock canyons like this one.  I had explored patches of this segment on day hikes past.

We passed a certain beech tree that I love, and which I feared had been killed by porcupines.  When I came here this past winter, I saw that porcupines had eaten all the bark from around the entire bottom of the tree.  I was sure no tree could survive such an assault, but here she is, looking great!

There are a few scenic overlooks along the trail here.

Brett's Overlook has a view to the west--with a haze out over the land from faraway wildfires in Canada.

Just before crossing Route 653, you come to this small and well-preserved graveyard.  We reached my friend's car and made a quick run into town.  We bought the world's most delicious sandwiches at Sarnelli's Deli and Market near Donegal.  He came back to camp with me, and we spent our second night laughing and chatting by the fire.  There were many neighbors in this campground, and not one but two rangers checked in.  I had planned this as a solitary trek, but it was a joy to have someone to share parts of it with.

I wanted an early start on Friday morning, and got out of camp while my friend was still in bed, and well before any of the other hikers in the campground got moving.  I had 12.5 miles to cover before arriving at my final overnight destination, the Ohiopyle Shelter Area.  The forests seemed better here, healthier, fuller, less in distress.  It was a balm to my worried heart.  The night before setting off--Thursday night--I fretted a little to my friend about the hard day I had ahead of me, and he helped me come up with a plan.  He looked at the map and said, "Okay, you're gonna stop and take a nice long break at mile 13 and then another one at mile 8.  Those will be your only goals.  After that, it's all downhill into Ohiopyle."  He was right, and it worked.  I set two goals for myself, achieved them easily, and made it in great time.

On YouTube videos of the trail, I'd always seen this large pond--is it Cranberry Glad Lake?  Many people stop to take a dip in its waters, but despite the heat, I wasn't about to take a swim.  I'm terrified of murky water.

The woods were pleasant here, if overrun with bugs and heat.  I began to cross more areas that I recognized from earlier section hikes.  

When you see the milestone informing you that you've only got eight miles till the end of the trail, you take heart.  You think to yourself, "Eight miles!  I've already covered 62 miles.  Eight more is nothing!"  Oh, but they are not eight ordinary miles.  They are eight of the steepest miles on the trail, and the bugs attack with a vengeance.  At the long descent into the Ohiopyle State Park, there is a nice view.

Those 12.5 miles from Route 653 Shelter Area to the Ohiopyle Shelter Area felt easy though.  After my 17-mile day (Wednesday) everything felt easy.  I chatted with my neighbors at the campground and got out of camp long before them on Saturday morning.  I was afraid of the 6.5 miles of rugged terrain that lay ahead of me, and even briefly entertained the possibility of following the little brook downhill out of the shelter area to the railroad tracks, which would lead me on a level train track directly into the town of Ohiopyle.  But I resisted the urge to do that, and did not regret it.

It was a beautiful hike through rugged terrain, very different from the landscape up to this point, more brutal, more beautiful.  But the mist hung so heavy over the early morning forest, and I was in such a rush that I took no photos.  I had to catch my shuttle back to mile 70 (the northern terminus) at 1:00pm.

In time, Sugarloaf Knob came into view, with the valley of the Youghiogheny River in the foreground, and I knew I was home safe.  The trails here are treacherously steep, and they run dangerously along the edge of high precipices, but middle-aged women jog these trails and smile at you as they pass.  

This is it, the end of the trail.  I hurried all morning so that I would not miss my 1:00pm shuttle, but I arrived at the end of the trail by 10:30am.

Here's proof, of sorts.  Haggard and weary, I trudged into the tiny borough of Ohiopyle on a Saturday morning to find the place abuzz with tourists and city-folk looking to escape the crowds.  It was kind of like Western Pennsylvania's humble answer to Aspen or Vail.  Coffee shops, wine bars, outfitters, gear shops, trendy restaurants, you name it.  The place was crowded.  I had been there many times and made my way to the Ohiopyle Coffee Company, where I sought out a shady spot on their side porch.  There I laid out my map and drank a celebratory americano, then used their restroom to change into the shirt I'd just washed at camp, and take a bath of sorts--with one of those prepackaged bath wipes.  It was no shower, but it helped.  After an outdoor lunch at the Falls Restaurant, I headed back to Wilderness Voyageurs for a prepaid shuttle back to my car--whose battery had given up the ghost during my long absence...

This is the Youghiogheny River from the bridge in Ohiopyle town.  It was such a satisfying experience to do a thru-hike, even if the trail was only 70 miles.  I found myself settling into the rhythms of the forest and of the long days of walking.  I slept better, wakened earlier, ate with more appetite, drank lots and lots of water.  I think I was operating the whole time on a calory deficit, but my body felt great--after the initial shock of the first day or two.  Walking was my only work, and I walked all day, and at the end of the day, made my home for the night.  I heard not a whisper from the gloomy thoughts that sometimes pester me when I'm at home with my routines.  The hike itself became my routine.  All was forest.  All was walking.  Or resting.  I don't know that I'll do many more thru-hikes.  The sense of accomplishment that they entail is due in part to their stress: you've got to cover certain distances in certain amounts of time.  You have an agenda to keep.  Base-camping might be my M.O. in the future--as it has been in the past.  But can I get my trail name now?   

NOTES TO FUTURE SELF:

-Never underestimate the miseries of chafing!  

-Always pack a rain suit

-Always pack a light set of clothes to wear only in camp

-Always remember not to push it too hard the first few days; it gets easier with time

-Always pack an odorless bar of soap for clothes and body

-Pack moleskins for blisters

-Trekking poles are necessary for us old guys on steep terrain, plus they turn a hike into a full body workout