Kevin's AT Thru Hike

Day 98, Wednesday, 6/22 – I slept well enough, but I woke up around 4:00am from a series of vivid, disturbing dreams. Sometimes dreams are powerful enough that they stick with me all day, and effect my mood. I was concerned that this would be the case today.

I don’t know why I had bad dreams last night. Maybe it was from eating too much pizza right before bed. It also could have been caused by the light that was shining into the shelter. The church had a security light for their parking lot that was controlled by a motion detector. Unfortunately, the motion detector was sensitive, so the light cycled on and off throughout the night. I would have chosen a different place to sleep had I known about the security light before it was too late to find a different spot.

I journaled for about an hour before getting out of my quilt and packing up. I was ready to hike by 5:30 which was about the time we said we were going to hike. I went into the church to find Birthday and Half Time still asleep on the couches. I didn’t mind, I made a pot of strong coffee, sat outside, and waited for them to get ready.

Right after leaving town, we crossed the Delaware River, and entered New Jersey. I was excited to be out of Pennsylvania.

The hiking was awesome today. The trail in New Jersey was far better than the last 40 miles or so of Pennsylvania. There were much less rocks and there were tons of great views. The trail today really had it all. We had hills to climb, walked along a few lakes, and hiked past a fire tower. I hadn’t fully realized how much the trail condition could effect my mood. We all hiked along in great spirits today.

We got a sad text from Dog Fish during the hike though. It turns out that her knee injury is both a torn ACL and a torn meniscus. She will be flying back home to Las Vegas for surgery and rehabilitation before too long.

At some point, we checked the forecast, and saw a lot of rain coming our way. We originally planned on camping at a tent-site, but we decided to push to Culver’s Gap to avoid the rain.

Over a month ago, Birthday had met Stephanie & Mike at Dragons Tooth in Virginia. At that time, they had extended him an offer to stay at their place when he got to New Jersey. Birthday reached out again recently, and they said we could all stay at their place. They had an RV with a few beds that was parked outside their home.

Towards the end of the hike, I walked along with Polaris. We had a chat about what brought us out to the Appalachian Trail, how we thought the experience would change our perspective going forward, and what life might look like after the trail.

I hiked 28 miles to Culver’s Gap (mile 1325). I walked down the road to meet back up with Half Time and Birthday, who were at Mountain House. We all got burgers at the restaurant; the food and the atmosphere at Mountain House was great. After dinner, Stephanie picked us up around 8:00pm and drove us to her home.

We arrived at Mike and Stephanie’s home, and she showed us to the RV. We dropped our stuff off inside, and walked over to their house. I met Mike and Devin inside. We all watched the Yankee’s game and chatted for a while. I wanted to continue hanging out, but by 9:30pm I was struggling to stay awake. I showered and headed off to bed.

Their home is right on Culvers Lake, so Half Time stayed up fishing with Devin until 12:30am.