Day 104. Harper’s Ferry

Mile 1160 – Ed Garvey To Mile 1173 – Keys Gap

After a relatively short hike this morning we crossed into West Virginia and entered the historic town of Harper’s Ferry. It was a fun hike among the old buildings, but our main purpose this morning was to stop at the ATC headquarters.

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy keeps volumes of books full of hiker photos and we were excited to add ours. I was surprised to see that we were only numbers 271 and 272 of intentional flip floppers this year. The ATC strongly encourages this for many reasons but, primarily, it helps to reduce the severe overcrowding at the southern end of the trail in the spring. They were interested to know why we chose that option for our hike so we discussed our planning process little.

The staff and volunteers there were amazingly friendly and we hung out for quite a while. We enjoyed chatting about the trail and our hike. It was particularly fun to hear some of their stories of other kids around Rocket’s age who have completed the trail.

Our photo in the ATC book

The other fun part of today was hiking in three states. We entered Virginia shortly after leaving the ATC and made our way to the place we had arranged to meet Brenda. We are looking forward to seeing her and spending the weekend together.

We arrived at our destination a few hours before our planned time. It was raining fairly hard and we were not thrilled with the prospect of waiting in the cold rain for hours. Fortunately there was a pizza place a quarter mile down the road! It was the perfect place to wait. Our server even found a blanket for Rocket to help her warm up.

Welcome to Virginia!