Trail Days was fun but not all I thought it would be. A lot of the speakers finished off their time by trying to sell something they had made or a book they wrote \u00a0And the gear companies were really pushy for the sell. I tried to convey that I was just there to learn and figure out what I should buy, but most of them realized I knew as much as they did about hiking gear and stopped the hard sell rather quickly. All in all, I’m glad I stopped to see the spectacle and check out the latest backpacking gear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the end of the second day in Damascus, the skies opened with pouring rain and wind, chasing everyone to their tents and vehicles. The next morning held the promise of an all day soaker, so I packed up and headed north to Shenandoah National Park.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the two days it took to reach Shenandoah (I take scenic back roads through the Blue Ridge Mountains), the weather was clearing and the view along Skyline Drive was beautiful. Drifting clouds and bright sunlight, exposed vast expanses of the valley below. \u00a0From numerous pullouts along the ridge line you could see for a hundred miles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I spent the night at Big Meadows Campground. Rain came again in the night. It seems like it rains almost every night and sometimes every day; At least it feels like it. What they wouldn’t give for some of this rain out west.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Karen and I will be hiking a section of the Appalachian Trail from Harpers Ferry, WV, through Maryland, and ending in Pen Mar Park, near the Pennsylvania border. It’s a section filled with\u00a0history: We will pass through historic Civil War Battlefields. \u00a0We will get to see the first Washington Monument. We follow the path of Louis and Clark, early railroads, remains of abandoned canals, and stand on the same rock that Thomas Jefferson spoke from. We are looking forward to spending a few days on the trail, now…if this rain would just go away for a few days. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trail Days was fun but not all I thought it would be. A lot of the speakers finished off their time by trying to sell something they had made or a book they wrote \u00a0And the gear companies were really pushy for the sell. I tried to convey that I was just there to learn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}