American Discovery Trail: A New Year

Monongahela Forest

This week, today, ends 2023, and a new year starts tomorrow. This year I resolve not to get hit by a car again - and I am more vigilant than I used to be - and to not go on any long cruises, at least for one year.

My walking has taken me over one million steps now since the Delaware Coast, 445 miles, through Delaware, Washington DC, and Maryland, and almost halfway across West Virginia. December was a good month, with just over 150 miles of trail covered and almost 11,000 steps per day. Also, today I finished the second West Virginia segment of the trail and started the third of the four segments in the state.

Weather up to now this winter has made the job easier, as I remember that the last couple of years, snow and freezing weather made it harder to walk in December. This year, temperatures have typically been in the forties and even fifties almost every day, which is just balmy for this part of the country in the middle of winter. I do not know if it is global warming, an El Niño year, or something else, but walking weather has been great.

Next year, the plan is to make my way through the rest of West Virginia, then Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, then into Nebraska. There is a very quick side trip to Kentucky in there as well.

This covered bridge, just a few miles off the trail in Philippi, is the oldest in West Virginia (built in 1852), and also the longest.

This section of the trail ends at Tygart Lake State Park, near Nestorville, WV.

American Discovery Trail: Almost Heaven...

 

I am in the middle of the seventh segment of this trip and the second in West Virginia, and I decided to switch to posting once a week if I can, because I like that better than waiting two weeks or more to post. There is usually something to write about in a given week, and if not, I can scribble down a few words about nothing.

This segment has the moderately-exciting-at-best name of "Streby to Nestorville," and the trail zigzags its way between the two towns: Google Maps says I can walk the distance in 51.2 miles, but the trail segment is 69.7 miles long. There will be a lot of that, all the way to California.

The main trail website lists the first place on this segment as Sherr, West Virginia, but a look at Google Maps shows that Sherr is clearly several miles behind me, so I am not going back there. The site does say that if you want accurate maps, you can get them at a website, so we cannot put too much stock in the main trail description pages. Instead, we will press on in a forward direction to the Allegheny Front, pictured here with a guy sitting on a stump, apparently watching for hawks. The trail through the Allegheny Front reaches up to 4,000 feet elevation, the highest area of the trail east of the Rockies.

Dolly Sods Wilderness, in the Allegheny Mountains

The Allegheny Mountains, which reach up to 4,863 feet

Blackwater Falls State Park, less than halfway to Nestorville, but about as far as I have walked, so we can stop there.

I am a little surprised to find that, six months after I started, I am not very close to 10% of the way along. However, by the end of next year I expect to be in Iowa, and possibly even Nebraska, so progress will come in time. For now, I expect to get new walking shoes tomorrow, and I will start wearing out another couple of pairs.

American Discovery Trail, Segment 6: Maryland to Streby, West Virginia

I have finished the sixth segment of 68 total on the trail, leaving Maryland and walking 60 miles into West Virginia, a place I have never been, at least since I can remember. I have walked a total of 380 miles on this trip, not bad at all, but still just getting going. By the time I finish the next segment, I will have a million steps in. These little milestones do not seem like the big deal they seemed when I started walking two years ago, but still, a million steps is worth taking notice.

One thing I am happy to see: Jackie wisely did some research back when I started my trip from Washington to Miami and helped me get two pairs of good walking shoes, which I have worn now for almost 3,900 miles, and I have worn holes in both pairs. I will need new ones for Christmas. That's a bit of an accomplishment right there.

The first place I walked through in West Virginia, according to the trail description, is called Green Spring, WV, another census-designated place, population 218. After searching for images of Green Spring, I posted this image, which is actually Switzerland, because it's a pretty picture. Perhaps I will do this in the future when I get to a place with no outstanding features. Something from Africa next time...
 

Fort Ashby, which was built to help fight the local Indians.

Birthplace of Nancy Hanks, Abraham Lincoln's mother, near Antioch, WV. The Internet says Nancy Hanks is distantly related to Tom Hanks as well as to George Clooney.

Potomac Highlands, part of the central Appalachian Mountains. The trail write-up says that the Potomac Highlands contains some of the oldest mountains and oldest hardwood forests in the world. It looks pretty.

American Discovery Trail, Segment 5: Finally, on to West Virginia

This picture, I believe, is of the private toll bridge across the Potomac between Oldtown, Maryland and West Virginia. The end of the fifth segment of the trail, and the last stop in Maryland, Oldtown is a census-designated place, and judging from the images available, it is not a big place. This bridge appears to be Oldtown's foremost claim to fame.

 The segment, 167 miles across the western part of Maryland, has taken several months to complete. I walked part of August, then went on vacation for more than three weeks, walked a couple of weeks in September, went on vacation again until Thanksgiving, lost my phone on vacation, took a few days to get a phone, then took a couple of days to load a walking app. I finally made it through the 167 miles on December 5, more than four months after I started.

West Virginia is not the biggest state - tenth smallest in fact - but by this trail it is 290 miles across, split into four segments. I expect to complete each portion in about two weeks, so that should get me to Ohio by early February.

As of today, I am 320 miles along. We have no vacations in the works, so the plan is to walk 150 miles per month, more or less - usually more - for the foreseeable future. Already, the map shows that I have separated myself from the Atlantic Ocean by a respectable distance, and every 150 miles is far enough to observe some clear progress.

Segment 5: Back on the Trail

 

Today, I started walking again.

The last day that I counted steps was September 21. Starting September 22, I went on vacation to Australia for two months, and I did not want to count steps while I was on my cruises. Then I dropped my phone in the South Pacific Ocean at American Samoa, so I did not have a way to measure my steps anyway. I got back to Washington on Thanksgiving Day, but then I did not get a new phone until Tuesday and did not load an app to count steps until late yesterday, so today was my first day back on my walking routine.

In addition to not counting my steps, I really did not walk a lot while I was cruising, so I was a bit concerned that it might be difficult to jump right into taking 10,000 steps right away. However, I walked this morning with Joel, which means going up and down some big hills, and I logged over 15,700 steps today (more than 7 miles), so I am still in good enough shape to pick up where I left off.

Today I am just over 300 miles from where I started in Delaware back on the first of July, so one sixteenth of the way to Drake's Bay, almost. I am also close to the Paw Paw Tunnel along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in Maryland. The tunnel opened in 1850 and is six tenths of a mile long, cutting six miles off of the previous length of the canal. I have another 13 miles to go to finish this segment and the state of Maryland - three days more. Then it's on to West Virginia.

Paw Paw Tunnel interior