The destination for our most recent road trip was Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. We didn’t really know that much about the area, but it turned out to be a very pleasant trip; one that we were very glad to have taken. The purpose: our anniversary trip. The main reason for picking that area: the hiking. I have this thing about hiking now that our children are grown and my task of home schooling the three of them is over. Also, being this close to the Appalachian Trail (AT) makes it hard to ignore. I went to Harper’s Ferry with dreams of hiking for a month straight on the AT, but once we started doing some hiking, I laughed and said, “Well, maybe for a week.” Later, I wondered if that would even be possible!
We arrived in early afternoon, and spent a bit of time driving around to get our bearings. We quickly found out a few things. One, Harper’s Ferry is a very small area, only the peak of land just down near the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers; two, there is almost no parking in Harper’s Ferry itself; three, the National Park Service owns many of the old buildings down near the rivers in Harper’s Ferry; and four, just uphill from Harper’s Ferry, an area you would still think was Harper’s Ferry, is actually an area called Bolivar. So here is our best tip: follow the signs for the park service visitor center just off of Highway 340 and take their shuttle bus into town. There is a $6 per car entry fee to the park, but that is good for 3 days. We decided it was a great value.
Harper’s Ferry is in West Virginia. Just a short ways past the Shenandoah River to the south is Virginia and across the Potomac River to the east is Maryland. We started the afternoon off by hiking a small portion of the AT in the Harper’s Ferry town area, with a stop on “Jefferson’s Rock.” There is some (old) speculation that the rock that we all currently stop at and climb on probably isn’t the very same rock that Thomas Jefferson stood on when he waxed poetic about the beauty of the area, but in my mind it surely must be one and the same. It is an awesome sight still, even with the highways and train tracks. We had lunch in town and walked out on the bridge that crosses the Potomac River into Maryland. After all of that, we decided it was time to find a hotel. There are several chain motels in town, and also quite a few B&Bs that looked nice. Our hotel of choice: the Historic Hilltop House Hotel. Alas, it was closed for renovations, but we did take a turn around the driveway to see their magnificent views–wow! The Hilltop’s website says it won’t be open until 2011 and then it will be a “first class destination hotel and spa,” which means that we probably won’t be able to afford to stay there when it opens!
On Friday we prepared for our long day of hiking, packing our backpacks full of water and snacks. After our experience on our hike to Rainbow Falls in Tennessee, we learned our lesson on doing a half-day hike without any food. We parked at the visitors center and rode the shuttle into Harper’s Ferry, then started our hike by crossing the bridge over the Potomac River and walked down the C & O Canal Path before heading up the trail into Maryland Heights. That was a wonderful day of hiking, but it had me wondering about my ability to do even a week of hiking on the AT, or any other strenuous trail. With a few rest stops along the way, though, we did fine. There is a lookout on some rocks way, way above the river that is so wonderful. That is where they take many of the Harper’s Ferry postcard pictures from. We stopped there for a long lunch, as did others who were out hiking that day. We continued up the mountain to the site of the old stone fort from the civil war battles. The two sides both owned the mountain at differing times, with the Union building the fort and hauling many cannons up the mountain. Just thinking of the Union army men building the roads on the mountain and building the fort and getting the cannons up there made me tired–how tired they surely must have been! We finished the 5-hour outing by heading back into town and thank goodness we had enough energy left to be able to get on the shuttle bus!
On Saturday, we packed up and checked out and then headed to the Blue Ridge Center for Environmental Stewardship on Harper’s Ferry Road, which is actually in Virginia. We did some hiking there on the paths they have and up an electrical line right of way to where the AT passes by. We spent quite a while there talking with a man from Georgia who was planning a surprise by meeting some friends of his who were hiking through on the AT. They had started in Georgia in March, and were planning on hiking all the way to Maine. (With Harper’s Ferry as the “psychological” halfway point, his friends would be finishing in late July, we figure.) His friends are a husband and wife who are in their late 50’s or early 60’s, and that gave us hope that we could, at the very least, tackle some more hiking trips in the future. Another hiker who was passing through as we stood there talking, said he had seen the couple earlier and they were probably a day behind him, which set up perfectly for the surprise this gentleman had planned. We saw many butterflies and several deer while hiking at BRCES and even some folks riding their horses on some of the trails. The highlight of this hike (besides spotting the deer running across the trail in front of us), was fording the stream which, after quite a bit of rainfall in the area, was quite high. We had found out about BRCES from a book titled, 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles (Washinton DC edition) and we initially had a problem locating the trail marker to cross the creek on our way out, and my husband thought it was at a spot with a bridge made from a log that was sitting at an angle, and which looked very difficult to cross. He was right, of course, we found out later, but at this time, we went back to another trail that crossed the creek, hoping that it might be a better spot to get across. After studying the situation for a few minutes, we took off our hiking boots and socks and walked across, then dried our feet with some small towels that we had (we did come prepared!) and put our footwear back on and continued on our way. After hiking up to the AT, while on way our back, we found our way to the trail we were originally supposed to be on going up, so we decided to take that back and see where it came out. Well, in pretty short order, we were back at the cockeyed log bridge. Well, the only thing to do was climb across it, but we had to get real low and scoot across part of it–boy were our legs protesting that! But it was one of those things for the memory books, something that we’ll always remember, I’m sure. That hike ended up taking quite a while with our conversation with the man on the AT, so we took off our muddy boots, got in the car and headed for home. What a great trip, with lots of sun and the weather in the high 60s and low 70s.
