Halfway There

6/18 Tuesday 18.5 mi
The end of Maryland brought us to Pen-Mar County Park and the state line. Pen-Mar was an amusement park from 1880-1940 or so and operated by the railroad. A popular place in its day. Now, just some pavilions and picnic tables, a shell of its former self. It does still have an outstanding view, and the local pizza place delivers there. We got there around the end of our day and yes, we ordered a large supreme pizza and sat down and waited on it. It felt good. I browsed through the small park museum while charging our cell phone inside. We had the park mostly to ourselves, and a few other hikers came and went while we were there.
Immediately after Pen-Mar you come to the Mason-Dixon line, the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania. Named after the surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, it took four years and solved a long time border dispute (sound smart, don't I? I should mention that was in the guidebook). We stopped for a picture, then stepped across into Pennsylvania. It felt as if we were finally done with the South. We had survived its tortures, and now we were in the North. We made it to Deer Lick Shelters and found a campsite for the night. (In Pennsylvania, for some reason, they like to build two smaller shelters instead of one larger one.)

6/19 Wednesday 13.2 mi
It rained unexpectedly hard overnight and got us wet, so we were not in the best of spirits the next day. We had so far easy walking in front of us, and made it to US 30 by late afternoon. We hitched into a nearby market to get a sandwich, and ended up caling the local motel to come and pick us up. We spent the night in Fayetteville PA, at a motel built in 1957, another relic of the past. There we met Tim and Kay, two locals who were helping run the place while the owner was away. They ended up cooking hamburgers and hot dogs for all of us that night, and were the best of hosts. We stayed up way too late, but didn't care.

6/20 Thursday 16.2 mi
We found breakfast at a restaurant across the street in the morning. Tim gave us a ride back to the trailhead, and we were on our way by 11 AM. There was a 1000' climb to start our day, but then after that it was pretty much level walking on top of the mountain. We made good time as the trail was not too rocky, either. Towards the end of our day we passed a campsite that is the halfway point on the trail this year. I say this year, because sections of the trail are rerouted from time to time, usually adding to the length of the trail (Well, they aren't going to make it any shorter!), which in turn changes the midpoint location. This year, it's at mile 1093.0 and is marked by some rocks spelling '1/2'. We made it another mile to Toms Run Shelters (again, two of them) and found a campsite with a stream nearby.

Currently at mile 1094.0