Finally! 1285.6 miles and we're in NJ, or "7 states down, 7 to go"

Whew... we both thought that there was a point when the rocks of PA might actually chew us up and eat us alive- but here we are in NJ, taking a day off and preparing to set off on the final leg of our AT adventure. It was great to have three family stops in a row (Sooze and Alan at Harpers Ferry, Mike's parents at the mid-point, and Laura's dad at the Delaware Water Gap), but now we'll be on our own until we finish. So, we have 893.5 miles to go- not counting the extra walking into and out of towns to resupply, as well as the re-routes that we'll encounter. In addition, Mike's sister is getting married at beginning of October so we need to be back in PA by the end of September. It's a tight schedule we'll be on and we realize that it's an ambitious goal, but we're ready for the challenge. We hope to be in NY by Monday if as long as we don't encounter any problems.

Some highlights of the northern half of PA:
-Laura was swarmed by bees, but luckily only stung 3 times
-We hiked through our first "Superfund" site near Palmerton, PA (a zinc smelting factory contaminated the area and basically destroyed all vegetation on Blue Mountain and the area is full of heavy metals such as zinc, cadmium, and lead)
-Mike saw a bobcat 'butt' as it jumped from a rocky outcropping and disappeared into the forest
-We both saw the biggest male Black Bear we've ever seen in our life, nearly face to face at 7:30/8 in the morning

It's been an incredible experience and we're excited to see what the north has to offer, so we'll keep you informed when we can!

(FYI- the only rattlesnakes we saw were sleeping in some ferns, and we were thankful that we weren't dodging them the way we imagined we'd be....)