A long hard week.

In the past 5 days I've hiked over 90 miles from Daleville to Waynesboro doing my second marathon day followed by 3 more 20+ mile days. It was the most difficult terrain I've seen in weeks, I was summiting multiple mountains some over 4000 feet and crossing through river valleys 670 feet above sea level. It was hard!  But now here I sit in Charlottesville, VA with my friends from college Steve and Alex who are engaged to be married in September. When I got off the trail I hit their scale and weighed 178lbs, after eating a 1lb hamburger, pork tenderloin, beans, rice, cookies, and anything else I could fit in my mouth I checked the scale again and am back to 190 lol.
In the past week I've seen multiple 4 foot+ black snakes, turkeys, deer, and a bear cub! I was hiking along one evening when I heard something scramble off the trail and stop when I saw the cub I immediately thought where is your mom? But continued walking the opposite direction that he ran off in whistling and walking loudly. About 10 minutes later I heard a crashing to the right of the trail, up a hill and thought the worst. I was happy to see 2 deer running up the hill away from me instead of mama bear, who I never did see. Right now I am 850 miles in, and 1 week from Harper's Ferry which is considered the half way point, which is really in PA about 200 miles away, where I will eat a half gallon of ice cream :-). The Shenandoah national park is known to be flat and easy hiking but nothing had been easy yet so we will see.