Day 86: The Roller Coaster, 1000 miles, and a new state

Today was a day of milestones. It started with rain. About 4:30am a thunderstorm began, and it rained well into the morning. It’s always harder to start when it’s wet, so we hit the trail about 8:30 after packing up in the rain. Of course it stopped raining shortly after. We went through Sky Meadows State Park in the morning, and after about 9 miles we hit “the roller coaster” which is basically a 14 mile stretch of trail with many ascents and descents, mostly about 400 feet in elevation change. We “peaked” about 11 times. It was rocky, and the rocks were wet, and the dirt around the rocks was muddy. About halfway through we crossed a huge milestone: 1000 miles! After a small celebration of catching our breath and wiping our sweat we continued on to Bears Den Hostel to pick up a package and eat some pizza, and then continued on to the Virginia State line before setting up camp for the night. We think we’re in West Virginia now, but we will be walking on the border until Harper’s Ferry. We packed out some wine to celebrate, after tomorrow we are done with Virginia for good! We walked 22.2 miles today, to mile 1006.5. Only 1182.6 to go!