No more kindness, politeness and caring people. No more biscuits, fried chicken and awesome high-fat food. No more rooting for the confederates, I am in Pennsylvania. I am back in the North! I crossed the Mason-Dixon line today while hiking with Rockhound and Hoplite. Rockhound’s psyched to be in his home state. Hoplite is psyched ’cause, well he is always psyched! And I am one state closer to New England and people who understand what being a Red Sox fan really entails.

It was a great hike today in cooler, but still hot and humid, weather. We hit a few rocky areas but the 18 miles just flew by. We saw a bunch of other hikers on the trail including Warren Doyle and his wife. Camping with the guys tonight as well as Condor, Einstein, Happy, BJ and Alabama, and just a ton of cicadas! More are emerging every minute and crawling up my tent. I know they aren’t harmful, but the scratching as they crawl up the sil-nylon is getting a bit annoying. I’ll take pictures in the morning of all the exoskeletons as their metamorphosis continues.

I received a bunch of mosquito bites last night, so I will be tenting out as much as possible for the foreseeable future. It’s tough for me to sleep well with that many hikers anyway.

We’re passing through small state parks almost every day. That gives us a chance to have lunch, buy soda (soda!) and hang out at comfortable picnic tables. It was Pen-Mar today and we’ll hit Caladonia tomorrow, then Pine Furnace on Wednesday. That’s the half-way point! i hope tomorrow’s 19 miles will be easy.

I took a wrong turn down an old road instead of the AT today for a while with Einstein. Just ⅔ of a mile each way, perhaps, but it was annoying! That is my first real wrong turn since the Blood Mountain fiasco back in March.

The breeze is picking up  and it should be a good sleeping night. I took some of my coolest pictures of the trail today of  a 1½ foot garter snake trying to eat a large toad—can’t wait to see them in high res!