Day Two: On foot by Lucas Wessner

I awoke on the second day of the trip to the quiet muffle of highways in the distance and the sun's rays just barely peeking above the horizon. I closed my eyes, for what felt like a second. I opened them again to a bright sun and most of the corps moving about. We heated up some water for oatmeal and cleaned up camp. After refilling our water bottles, our journey on the famous Appalachian Trail had just begun.

The idea of the Appalachian Trail was brainstormed almost a century ago, in the year 1922, by a man named Benton MacKaye. Unfortunately MacKaye died before he could follow through with these ideas. Myron Avery followed up MacKaye, making the construction of the trail possible. Avery became the first to hike on the trail in 1937. The trail stretches from Maine to Georgia, an entire 2,181 miles.

Our trek on the Appalachian Trail began with a brief ascent, before we were cruising along the top of the ridge. To pass the time, we decided to play a few word and spelling games. Several hours and about 9 miles later, we arrived at Bear Rocks for a much needed lunch. Summer sausage and cheddar cheese wrapped in a tortilla hit the spot. With a full stomach, I laid my pad out and relaxed.

After about two hours at Bear Rocks, our trek proceeded. It was another two hours of hiking until we filled up our water bottles for the first time since the morning. We had arrived Blue Mountain Summit Restaurant. We went inside to see two south bound thru hikers we had seen the previous day. The two have hiked 945.3 miles so far. After drinking some raspberry tea and listening to a few of the thru hiker's stories, we went on to hike the last stretch of the day.

After hiking a total of about 18 miles total that day, we arrived at the Allentown shelter. We set up tarps, started a fire, ate our dinners, and spent the rest of the night begging David for gummy worms.





Lucas Wessner