West Virginia, June 24th

I had a rough nights sleep. No matter what I did I just couldn't fall asleep even though I took sleep medicine. At some point in the night it started raining, the wind blew in the rain from the open window against my bed. I struggled to close it. I eventually turned off the fan too early in the morning, I think that's what ultimately kept me up because I slept soundly until voices woke me up from the other room of people eating breakfast. It was a self serve breakfast of pancake batter and mulberries. They had a griddle on so we could cook our own pancakes. I made 2 large pancakes loaded in the berries, they were picked from out in the backyard from my understanding. They are pretty similar to blackberries.

Today I'm slackpacking the 20 miles into Harpers Ferry. I arranged a shuttle driver to pick up my pack. Harpers Ferry, WV is considered the unofficial halfway point on the trail. I'm not moving very fast but I'm so thankful that the weather is nowhere near as hot as it has been the past few days. There's even a lovely breeze.

Today I crossed the boarder into West Virginia! It's been so long since I've entered a new state. Virginia is the longest the trail stays in one state. I feel so accomplished to have made it this far!

I've flicked multiple ticks off of my body despite having put bug repellant on before leaving.

I found some cherry trees today. Dirty Duck was sitting there chowing down telling me what kind of cherries the different trees were. They were delicious. I had some serious stomach cramps later, I'm not sure what they were from, possibly the cherries?

I ended up getting 3 flies in my eyes in the span of an hour. I got 2 out but the third took hours to finally get out. I didn't get it out until we got to town at a restaurant.

You can see the fly smooshed in my eyeball

Duck fond a cool moth.

My shoes were completely worn out. It was so painful to walk. I was told that my shoes were only really meant to last 500 miles. I should have replaced them much earlier. I had to keep stopping. I was limping at times, it was miserable.

Right before Harpers Ferry we crossed a large river on a car bridge. It was beautiful.

Coming out of the woods and into Harpers Ferry was crazy. It felt like I got teleported to someplace nowhere near the trail. The town was particularly fancy and clean. It had money. This town was too pure for the hiker trash pouring in from the trail. I walked into a live Jazz concert happening in the park with people dressed up in fancy clothes laying on lawn blankets and eating cheese and fruits. Then we came walking up looking like a band of filthy homeless people climbing out of the woods to stink up the place. I felt out of place.

We met up with Scout and Sun and went out to dinner at a place called Anvil. I really liked the place but we got such terrible service. The waitress paid us almost no attention. It took an hour for our waitress to come back for our checks after asking. We had called the Teahorse hostel that where we made reservations that we had just gotten into town and were eating at the restaurant down the street. By the time we got there he wouldn't answer the doorbell even though we told him around the time we were coming. Another hiker let us in the passcode door and we found our own beds and my pack that I had sent ahead.

Sun's boyfriend came to visit.

Today in Harpers Ferry I made it to mile 1023.1 with 1166.7 left to go.