04.06 - Day 141 - Harpers Ferry, WV

Tuesday 4th June - Harpers Ferry, West Virginia (Day 141)

The Appalachian Trail runs 2,100 miles from Maine in the north to Georgia in the south. I have now walked all of it in West Virginia; there is a one mile stretch between two rivers crossing and state borders. 

I’m all alone on the trail through woodland coming across a few deer who seem nonplussed by my appearance. There is the gravestone of Robert Harper and his niece in the original cemetery and the Jefferson Rock from which he said in 1783 “this scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic”. Don’t know if he’d made it to Niagara Falls or any of the grand national parks we’ve seen by then… 

Back at the Quality Inn it’s time for breakfast and school work, before heading a mile out of town to the National Park where we go on a long looped walk hugging the edge of the forest where occasional plaques describe moments in the Civil War which we try and piece together (mostly unsuccessfully). 

There are some cannons from a pivotal moment but we stop only briefly in the 30 degree sun, instead seeking share on a bench looking down over the river below. Sienna and Seb in the process tackle a Junior Ranger booklet - one of the trickier ones requiring you to visit some of the smaller museums in town as well as the more standard word searches and mazes. 

It’s back into the baking car and back to the hotel to cool off and relax. We pack a little picnic dinner and head into the town around 4pm, walking, as we did yesterday, up and over the bridge over the Potomac River, but then walked upstream a little between the river and abandoned dry canal. 

There are several breaks in the foliage and into one of them we drop for a private small stoney beach where we eat and drink, followed by stone and stick throwing in games, Sienna and Seb make up about boats invading the shoreline. 

Enjoying the time in the dropping sunshine we look for another similar spot - skipping the one with a sunbathing snake - settling instead on a pair of large boulders jutting into the water for more play. Everyone happy we start walking home, spotting on the way what transpires to be a Groundhog - not a beaver, otter or prairie dog like our first guesses - down in the dry canal.