7-8-2009 Wed

Start point: Birch Run Shelter
End point: north of Pole Steeple
miles hiked: 14
Ziggy showed up while I was packing up and eating. We hit the half-way point today (1089 miles) so to celebrate making it half way it is tradition to eat a half gallon of ice cream. I hiked ahead but promised I would wait for Ziggy to get there before I started the challenge. At Toms Run Shelters I stopped to do some push-ups (work up an appetite), and the floor of the shelter was so well varnished I tried some break-dancing as well (sad attempt, I know).

Got to the Pine Grove General Store in the State Park and Beechucker and Fish Sticks were there (not doing the challenge [lame]). They stuck around to watch me and Ziggy, we kind of made the challenge into a race between the 2 of us. They had Hershey's Ice Cream, which I'd never had before. We both got the Moose Tracks flavor, which was vanilla with pieces of fudge and little peanut butter cups in it. I finished (3500 calories later) in 20mins30secs, Ziggy shortly behind me at 22mins. We sat around and veg'd out for awhile (at least an hour), then both ate a burger and shared some fries (more food! what were we thinking). We then walked just a short way over to a beach they had made on the shore of a lake and sat around there for another 30 mins or so. Eventually got going and hiked till we found a good camp spot on the side of the trail. Made a really good fire, lots of very dry wood around the spot we had.

The old midpoint marker (mileage is wrong now)