It begins above the tree line in Maine, and it ends–2,168 miles later–here, on a Georgia peak trimmed in oak, maple, poplar, hickory, hemlock and even a few magnolias.
It is the Appalachian Trail. It is a hiking trail. It is a trail that brings exhilaration and breaks hearts.
It can be soft, but mostly it is steep and rocky, and sometimes it’s beyond rocky.
“It’s ridiculous,” one hiker–trail name, “Engine”–said of a particular segment of trail in Pennsylvania. “It’s absolutely ridiculous.”
Agreed another veteran of the trail, who calls himself “Lionheart”: “It doesn’t look like it’s part of this planet.”
And then there’s the weather . . .
We’re not going to hike the Appalachian Trail here. It can take six months or more, for one thing.
For another: In 2001, 2,375 northbound hikers left Springer Mountain for Mt. Katahdin, the northern terminus. Only 389 made it to the end.
Fewer still–45 of the original 400 or so who started out–made it southbound, our direction of choice.
We’re going to hike it a little and drive it a lot, along roads that more or less run parallel to its 14-state course. We’ll take a couple of quick side trips.
Is this the best way?
“More and more,” said a friend of the trail, “we have people with lots of car support, and that’s fine. They will have wonderful experiences. They will have great stories to tell, and very possibly they will have experiences that will change them.
“But the people who mine gold walk it, from one end to the other.”
Maybe next time.
This time — let’s take a ride.
Day1:
Katahdin, Maine to Gorham, N.H.
“Every year, it seems like they have to rescue someone off different cliffs. Every year, it seems like they fall off.”
Millinocket store clerk Janice McPheters
The Appalachian Trail, from north to south, begins near a town in Maine called Millinocket, at the top of a mountain called Katahdin, on a spot called Baxter Peak.
This is to be my starting point. I have a craving for lobster.
But in mid-May, when I arrive, the trail to Baxter Peak is still closed by snow. That’s why most hikers start earlier, in Georgia, and finish up here. The closest I can get to the peak is Katahdin Stream Falls, about 5 miles short.
I hike the 1.2 miles to Katahdin Stream Falls. It is my first taste of the Appalachian Trail.
The trail is mostly easy, but in stretches it is less a trail than a succession of rocks. In other stretches, it seems to vanish entirely. There’s help.
“Always,” says Rick Ste. Croix, “follow the white blazes.”
The white blazes are 6-by-2-inch vertical white rectangles, painted on trees. Where there are no trees, they are painted on rocks, or on mountain walls, or on boulders, or on anything else that’s semi-permanent. On the trail, they appear every 50 yards or so. For through-hikers, for day-hikers, they become almost friends.
Ste. Croix, 48, is a volunteer with the Maine Appalachian Trail Club. The trail may be part of the National Park system, but it’s clubs like St. Croix’s–and volunteers like St. Croix–who maintain and monitor it.
And who paint the white blazes.
“Other trails have blue blazes, or red,” he says, “but only the Appalachian Trail has white.”
No, he says, he’s never hiked the whole 2,168 miles. “I work for a living,” he says.
He smiles.
“Someday.”
The climb–a challenge mainly to wobbly ankles–is worth it. Katahdin Stream Falls is 50 feet of white water thundering down a series of rock terraces, framed by all manner of trees. It is a good spot, and it is here I meet Mike Lamoreau.
My legs are weary. Mike Lamoreau’s are not. Mike Lamoreau, who just did the same hike I did, is 82 years old.
“I first climbed that mountain in 1934,” he says. “Last time I climbed it–10, 11 years ago–we painted all those blaze signs, some on walls and some on trees. You get above tree line, the blazes are painted on rocks.”
I ask if there is wildlife up here.
“Oh, heavens yes,” he says. “You mean you haven’t seen a moose yet? “
A moose.
“Usually you see ’em. There’s a lot of ’em here.”
I want to see a moose. I also have to get down off this mountain.
The closest thing in Maine to a road parallel to the Appalachian Trail is a combination of highways miles off the trail. There is an occasional pond or a stream–I slow to see if I can spot a moose–and lots of trees. Much of interior Maine is a tree farm.
Near Guilford, a covered bridge. A pretty pond near Kingsbury, with mountains in the distance.
No moose.
Past Bingham, Maine Highway 16 turns beautiful, the Appalachians always ahead or to one side. Kingfield, with its freshly painted New England whiteness, is a charmer.
No moose.
The road glides past Sugarloaf, the winter ski area, then Stratton, another sweet little town, and, teasingly, signs declaring “Moose Crossings.”
Finally. A moose. Nibbling at a roadside tree.
I stop the car, grab my camera and bag my first moose.
Another covered bridge. The New Hampshire state line.
Another moose. I pass it slowly. No photo.
Off the left side of the road, fishermen in waders, pursuing trout in a stream with fly rods. Ahead, serious mountains–the first sighting of the Whites.
Further on, to the right, two more moose.
I don’t slow down at all.
Day 2: Gorham to Manchester, Vt.
“You can just focus on one thing. You’re just really able to focus on, on– on watching a crow fly.”
Winter through-hiker Adam Lebow
There are 48 peaks above 4,000 feet in New Hampshire. The Appalachian Trail goes over 24 of them.
None is higher than Mt. Washington’s 6,288 feet.
In 1861, entrepreneurs opened a toll road to the top of the northeast’s highest mountain, tallest of the White Mountains. These days, it costs $16 to drive your car up the Mt. Washington Auto Road, more if you have passengers.
On this particular day, the charge would be $8. The 8-mile road was closed at the tree line, 4 miles up.
“It’s pretty brutal up there,” explains the man at the tollgate.
Current weather at the summit of Mt. Washington: temperature, 14 degrees; winds, 75 miles an hour.
It is pretty brutal even at the halfway point. You can’t see the summit of Mt. Washington from there, but the views of the mountain range called the Presidentials are glorious.
A lower section of the Appalachian Trail crosses the Mt. Washington Auto Road 6 miles below the summit. I park and start following the white blazes.
Here in the woods, there is only the sound of wind, the warmth of dappled sunshine and the sweet tinkle of a brook’s trickling water.
Nice.
A rock bridge takes me over the brook and farther into the woods. There, I meet a day-hiker. He is an obstetrician reared in Ohio, now of Boston, upset by the rising cost of liability insurance and working it out on the Appalachian Trail. He has hiked here from Pinkham Notch, about 2 miles up the trail.
“Most of it is rocks,” he says. “You need a good pair of shoes–and it’s not for everyone.”
I continue a bit, then head back to the car and drive to Pinkham Notch. There is a long parking lot there filled with dozens of cars belonging to day-hikers.
At a picnic table are two men who clearly are not day-hikers.
Now, most Appalachian Trail through-hikers head north from Georgia in March or April and meet up with summer along the way.
Brothers Daniel and Adam Lebow left Springer Mountain on Nov. 11, 2001. It is six months to the day since they left.
Their trail names–hikers here take trail names–are Oto and Si. They have been through-hiking the Appalachian Trail in winter.
“We’ve been the only ones on this trail, the whole way,” says Daniel, 26. “That’s one of the reasons we decided to do it, actually,” says Adam, 30.
They did the trail six years earlier, conventionally. Different this time?
“More miserable,” says Daniel. “Most of the time you’re pretty uncomfortable when it’s very cold.”
You knew that. So why . . .
“That’s part of the challenge.”
They had just come down brutal Mt. Washington.
“Yeah, it was crazy yesterday,” says Daniel. Adds Adam: “It was kind of like walking through honey.”
They had, in six months, walked 1,849.1 miles of the Appalachian Trail. I had, in two days, walked 3.4 miles of the Appalachian Trail.
I tell them I’m driving it.
“That’s pretty awesome,” says Daniel.
I don’t buy it. Nor do I envy them one whit.
It’s good to be back on the road, especially when road is in this part of New Hampshire. From the town of Glen, U.S. Highway 302 moves gloriously between massive granite faces through Crawford Notch. Maybe the through-hikers saw this better. Maybe not.
The highway continues past the gleaming, century-old Mt. Washington Hotel–but I don’t need pampering.
I need a little bit more of the Appalachian Trail.
I follow the roads into Vermont. The maps say the Appalachian Trail crosses Vermont Highway 12 north of town, but there’s no trace of it, and I’m losing daylight.
I’m back on U.S. Highway 4. A sign says Calvin Coolidge’s house is a left turn away, but not now.
Farther west on U.S. 4, a sign.
I walk the Appalachian Trail until it’s time to turn around. It is a short hike among the white blazes, no challenge at all, but it is one more taste.
There’s all kinds of sustenance.
Day 3: Manchester to Stroudsburg, Pa.
“They dry their clothes right on the front porch. It looks like a laundromat.”
Trail town resident George Truax
It is raining. Driving on New England’s country roads in the rain, in springtime, protected from the elements, with classical piano on the car radio, is a pleasure. A privilege.
Vermont’s Green Mountains become Massachusetts’ Berkshires.
The road, U.S. Highway 7, passes through towns decades older than America. The rain turns heavy. I want to get back on the Appalachian Trail, somewhere. But I think about the rain, and the mud, and the slick rocks.
I pass a covered bridge. Eleven miles later, I’m in Connecticut.
The map says the trail cuts through a town called Falls Village. I cross over the Housatonic River on a one-lane bridge, take a right, and there it is: a hole in the forest, parking for one car–and white blazes.
I’d packed a poncho just for this, but the rain is really coming down. On the other hand, I remind myself, I’ve played bad golf in worse than this.
The Appalachian Trail at Falls Village leads to the waterfall that gave the village its name. The thick forest diffuses the rain. The rocks–and parts of the trail are nothing but solid rock–grip the soles of my boots.
It’s actually pleasant in there, and the view of the Great Falls of the Housatonic is a decent payoff for a little discomfort. Across river, a hydroelectric plant turns the power of the falls into the power that lights, among other things, the Falls Village Inn.
“We get a lot of solos. People in twos and threes.”
George W. Truax, who lives above the combination bar-pizza joint, is sipping a beer, alone, on the bar’s covered porch. In summer, he is rarely alone on this porch.
“A couple years ago,” says Truax, “we had, must’ve been 25 or 30 Australians and English, in one group. They come in here, started drinking at 11 a.m. and didn’t stop until 3 the next morning–hootin’ and hollerin’ and singin’.
“They all slept on this porch overnight.”
He takes a sip.
“I like talkin’ to ’em,” he says. “They got a lot of stories to tell. You hear some stuff.”
Back on the road.
As the Berkshires, then New York’s Catskills, become the Poconos in Pennsylvania, puffs of cloud float among the hills. Sometimes, the puffs drift down to the highway, and the fog is not fun.
Hikers along the Appalachian Trail, any up this far north this early in the season, might be huddled under shelters or comfortable in tents on the hillsides of the Delaware Water Gap.
I’m gripping a steering wheel in the fog, driving slowly, guessing.
Advantage: hikers.
Day 4: Stroudsburg to Hagerstown, Md.
“When you’re out there a long time, your senses change. Just like the birds know a storm is coming.”
Hikers’ minister Rev. Karen Nickels
A century ago, the borough of Delaware Water Gap was a resort town. Today it isn’t much of anything, but it is on the Appalachian Trail.
A church, now the Presbyterian Church of the Mountain, opened in 1854 as something else. It has seen lean times. For 30 years, until Rev. Karen Nichols arrived in 1988, it had no pastor. Today, it has a pastor and a mission: hikers.
On this morning, four hikers are relaxing in the church basement that has been converted to a hostel for hikers. At peak times, the church will feed as many as 70 through-hikers in a day. Today, there are just Engine, Red Baron, Marine One and Lionheart.
Engine is a pharmacist who is between jobs. Red Baron is his brother, just out of college. They started in Georgia three months ago.
“I had a mindset of what to expect out here,” says Engine, “but once you get out on the trail, it’s totally different.”
What will they take back? “Not to complain about the little things, like `I have to drive through the rain,'” says Red Baron. “We’ve had to walk through the rain every day . . . “
This is Lionheart’s fifth through-hike on the Appalachian Trail. As a child, he was stricken with polio. His walk is still irregular. “Hiker’s gait,” he calls it.
“I do it to prove to myself I can still make it,” says Lionheart, 49. “I’m just an old cripple-man.”
Marine One–real name, David Jensen, 64, formerly of Downers Grove but now from Indianapolis–started this hike last year, was stricken by a parasite, recovered, then ripped up a knee.
“So this year,” he says, “I get back on the trail and make it up to here. Determination and the dream keeps me going.”
Along with letters from 77 kids from a school back home. And something else.
“Out on the trail,” he says, “it seems every time you need something, somehow it happens, you know what I mean?”
The hikers have a name for it: “trail magic.”
“It can be real, real hot out,” explains Engine, “and you’re running low on water and you’re not feeling good–and you come to a crossing and there’s a big cooler there with water in it, and fresh fruit, and a sign on it: `Take what you need.'”
“Someone giving you a ride into town,” adds Red Baron, “or someone brings extra food to a shelter, stuff like that.”
“All the hikers take care of each other,” says Lionheart.
In a day or two, all four will be gone, walking toward Katahdin. Maybe all will get there; maybe not.
The constant is Rev. Karen Nickels.
“We practice the spiritual discipline of hospitality,” says Nickels, originally from Wilmette. There is a growing resident congregation, she says, but during hiking season, there are these transients as well.
“And they’re always invited as they are, straight off the trail, forest wet, filthy dirty,” she says. “We love stinky hikers. They have that wonderful hiker ambience.”
There are many “friends of hikers” on the Appalachian who provide for their needs. So it is, in her way, with Rev. Karen Nickels.
“You have people who have become dissatisfied, even angry with where they are in life,” she says. “They need to make a change and haven’t a clue what it is–so they drop it all and hike the trail.”
The part of the Appalachian Trail called the Mt. Minsi Trail begins just up Mountain Road from the Presbyterian Church of the Mountain. It is rocky, just rocky enough to test ankles.
After 1.5 miles, there is a clearing, a place called Lookout Rock. And below is the Gap, where the Delaware River winds through Kittatinny Ridge. If this were Germany, there would be a castle where I am standing . . .
The Appalachian Trail is a few miles west of Gettysburg. It is a few miles east of the battlefield at Antietam, in Maryland.
Through-hikers, unless they can catch a ride, would miss both.
But I have a car.
Day 5: Hagerstown to Harrisonburg, Va.
“Age isn’t a factor. Blind people have hiked it. They’ve hiked it on crutches. A guy with no stomach hiked it. It’s the mental determination.”
ATC’s Brian King
This patch of America is full of places where great events took place.
One of them is Harpers Ferry.
Jefferson was here, and Meriwether Lewis, and John Brown and Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln and George Armstrong Custer, and Frederick Douglass.
The Appalachian Trail marches right through Harpers Ferry, crosses by footbridge over the Potomac, then follows the river along what was the towpath of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. The trail here is flat and broad–locals use their bikes on it–and it is alive with butterflies and given added interest by ruins of the old canal’s locks.
I do 5 miles here.
Here, too, is the headquarters of the Appalachian Trail Conference, the mother organization of all the volunteer clubs that maintain the trail.
“Three or 4 million people a year go out on the trail for some amount of time,” says Brian King, ATC director of public affairs. “Sounds like a lot, but remember you’ve got 2,100 miles of trail and 365 days a year.”
What’s down: through-hikers. Nearly 3,000 set off in 2000, almost twice the number of five years earlier. Last year, 2,375 tried it. King says the numbers this year are down another 16 or 17 percent.
“I think people are talking about the crowding,” King says. “There’s a lot of [online] chatting about that among the hikers. And the economy has something to do with it.”
A six- or seven-month through-hike can cost $3,000 to $6,000 per person, depending primarily on gear, level of food and number of nights spent in motels along the way. And, he says, word is out about how tough this can be.
“That first few hundred miles [out of Georgia] is every bit as rough, and maybe moreso, as what you get in the White Mountains or Maine,” King says. “You’re going to get ice storms, snow in April and an awful lot of rain.
“Fifty percent are gone before they get to Virginia.”
It is 38.6 miles from Harpers Ferry in West Virginia to the Skyline Drive in Virginia, a 105-mile-long two-lane road that rides the Blue Ridge spine of Shenandoah National Park. For much of its length, but unseen, the Appalachian Trail rides along.
Near the road’s 17-mile stake is an opening in the woods.
I follow the white blazes up the mountain. For stretches, carpets of tiny white flowers border the trail, then purple flowers, then more white. Then it is rocks.
It is late in the day. There is no one else on this part of the Appalachian Trail. The only sounds are the sounds of soft wind and myriad songbirds, and the sound of my boots on rocks.
Then an overlook, of the east side of the Shenandoah Valley.
No wonder poets wrote of this.
How many soldiers, gray and blue, must have yearned to sit in this place of peace . . .
Day 6: Harrisburg to Johnson City, Tenn.
“Some through-hikers don’t have trail names. It’s up to you. “
Hiker with trail name “Garraty”
Interstate Highway 81 is the finest interstate east of the Mississippi. For much of its length, it parallels Shenandoah National Park’s Skyline Drive and, farther south, the Blue Ridge Parkway, both undeniably scenic and maddeningly slow if you’re really trying to get someplace.
The interstate is a valley highway. History runs alongside: Woodrow Wilson’s birthplace, Cyrus McCormick’s farm, Stonewall Jackson’s house. Old U.S. Highway 11, no longer the prime carrier from New Orleans almost to Montreal, is reduced to I-81’s frontage road here. But hopping onto it from time to time is a way to re-connect with Main Streets and courthouse squares, and to escape the groans of 18-wheelers.
You need to see people walking and living, or you forget.
The Appalachian Trail rides the ridges above and below Interstate Highway 81. North of Roanoke, the trail slips beneath it, and near the Virginia town of Catawba is the trailhead for a hike to the top of McAfee Nob.
It begins as a soft trail, with some rocks on either side and purple wildflowers. Minutes into the walk comes this journey’s first lizard-sighting, a reminder we’re a long way from Maine and the snows of Katahdin, and from moose.
Farther up is a bulletin board with information about this section of the Appalachian Trail. Alongside is a registration book. There are many of these along the 2,168 miles. In these books, hikers provide bits of information to other hikers–but most just write the date and their trail names.
I scribble nothing. To my mind, a place in these books, like trail names, is earned by through-hikers, not hobbyists. I move on.
The trail, almost always uphill now, turns rocky. Sometimes it is just boulders. Always, the white blazes on the oaks and maples and hemlocks and beech draw you forward.
About a mile into the trail,two hikers, a man and woman, both in shape, are on their way down.
“You’ve got about an hour,” the young woman says of the Nob. “It’s like this until you get near the top. Then it’s spectacular.”
It’s worth it?
“You’ve got a good camera,” she says. “Oh, yeah.”
Another mile up is one of the modern shelters provided by the clubs. There, sitting on an edge, is a man, alone, finishing lunch. He is too clean. I’m thinking he’s a banker. I’m close; he is a partner in a Boston company that designs computer systems.
His trail name: Garraty, after a Stephen King character in “The Long Walk.” He looks to be in his 40s. He is not happy to see me.
This is his second through-hike on the Appalachian Trail. He has reasons for being here again.
“It’s complicated,” he says, “and it’s not going in a newspaper.”
He sees my notebook droop. He senses my disappointment.
“OK,” he says. “It gives me an opportunity to think over various options.”
He has also twice done the Pacific Coast Trail, the one that runs from Canada to the Mexican border. He’s here, but he likes that one better.
“It has much more spectacular and varied scenery,” he said.
This one also has its little caste system. Hikers with car support are not at the top.
“It doesn’t bother me at all,” he says. “The Pacific Coast Trail, nobody cares. They deliberately don’t care. They don’t discuss it–and that’s appropriate. It should be each person’s decision.”
We talked about trail names. What I’m doing–can I have a trail name?
“Why not?”
I just don’t want to offend the purists . . .
“Don’t care,” he says. Firmly. “Why do you care? Some through-hikers don’t have trail names. It’s up to you. “
How about the registers?
“Why not?”
One more thing: What are those little blue flowers?
“I don’t know flowers,” he says.
I know I don’t want to hike another 2 1/2 miles to McAfee Knob and back. I’m tired, my left ankle wants to scream and my right knee is sending me its own message.
The walk down the mountain, as always, is quicker than the climb up. Before long, I’m at the bulletin board, and the register. I open the book. I read what’s in there.
I reach for my pen.
And below Roadrunner, and Sidewinder, and Garraty, alongside this day’s date, I write:
Tribguy.
Day 7: Johnson City
to Springer Mountain, Ga.
“A lot of ’em, you know they’re not going to make it.”
Trail supervisor Olin Batchelor
The drive down U.S. Highway 11E/321 isn’t great, and it’s about 15 miles off the Appalachian Trail. But there’s a sign.
In the overall scheme of things, Davy Crockett’s Tennessee birthplace isn’t, say, Gettysburg. But I had a coonskin cap, and I cried in 1955 when Fess Parker was a-swinging that rifle at the fall of the Alamo, and I still know most of the words to the song.
Patricia Osborne is a-watching the museum at Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park.
I get her attention.
“We’re not on a mountain top.”
“Nope,” she says.
“Hear that a lot, don’t you?”
“Yep,” she says. “Shore do.”
She smiles.
Back on the road.
Gatlinburg, Tennessee gateway to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, makes Reno look understated. I pick up the Appalachian Trail at the national park’s Clingman’s Dome parking lot.
It is a fine walk, once past a paved but steep beginning. The rhododendrons are in bloom. It is cool, but the sun emerges every so often, and from overlooks the mountains take on layered shadings.
A month earlier, through-hikers would have battled sleet and snow, high winds and general misery on this trail.
Today, it is magnificent, but there is little time to linger.
Today, there’s one more thing.
The last 20 miles to the parking lot at the Springer Mountain trailhead in Georgia are gravel, pitted and not fun.
I begin my last hike on the Appalachian Trail–to the summit of Springer Mountain.
It is a good trail. The forest is brilliant green. In parts, the floor is covered with ferns, and it feels much like a rain forest.
A moose would love it here.
I’ve walked about a mile. The summit must be near. Ahead, I see a man with an ax. I’m guessing he is a volunteer, and I’m right: He is Olin Batchelor, trail supervisor of the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club.
“We get between 2,000 and 3,000 through-hikers starting out here every year,” he says. “Only about 10 percent make it. You know that story.
“A lot of ’em come this way and you say to yourself, `Lot of hope there.'”
And with a lot of ’em, not much chance. Ever tell one the truth?
“You don’t tell ’em anything,” says Batchelor. “You destroy a dream, if you tell ’em.”
Well, how far to the plaque?
“What plaque?”
The one at the top. Where the trail starts.
Olin Batchelor points behind me.
I’m going the wrong way?
Batchelor smiles. “You’d have kept going,” he says, “you would’ve ended up at Katahdin.”
I turn around.
It is a mile back to the parking lot. It is another mile to the top of Springer Mountain.
It is a good trail. The Appalachian Trail is a good trail.
The finish?
Trail magic.
ROAD NOTES
Highlights: Katahdin Stream Falls (Maine), moose, Crawford Notch (N.H.), Vermont, songbirds, Housatonic River roads (Conn.), hikers, diners, old graveyards, Appalachian Trail club volunteers, Delaware Water Gap (Pa., N.J.), butterflies, Shenandoah National Park (Va.), Interstate Highway 81 (Va.), Davy Crockett’s birthplace (Tenn.), Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Tenn., N.C.), rhododendrons and Springer Mountain (Ga.).
Road food: Lobster, steamers (clams), haddock, chowder, oysters, pot roast, real maple syrup, turkey, scrod, scrapple, crab cakes, trail mix, hush puppies, grits, biscuits and gravy, barbecue, country ham, candy bars, North Carolina trout, boiled peanuts and pork rinds.
Best lodging: Aspen Motel, Manchester, Vt.
Best-looking lodging: Mt. Washington Hotel & Resort, Bretton Woods, N.H. One of those great old grand hotels.
Best meal: Baked flounder stuffed with crab imperial, $17.95; Red Horse Steak House, Hagerstown, Md.
Favorite A.T. hike: In Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Clingman’s Dome trail (Tenn.) to a pair of overlooks; 2.2 miles round trip.
Easiest A.T. hike: On the old Chesapeake & Ohio Canal towpath alongside the Potomac River, near Harpers Ferry, W.Va.; 5 flat miles round trip.
Best town: Manchester, Vt.
Worst town: Gatlinburg, Tenn. Congested? It’s beyond congested.
Best reason to check the weather: In 1934, winds atop Mt. Washington (N.H.) were clocked at 231 miles an hour.
Best bird: Brilliantly red-headed woodpecker, near McAfee Knob (Va.).
Best mammal: Moose. Maine and New Hampshire.
Best reasons to veer off the trail: Gettysburg (Pa.) and Antietam (Md.) battlefields.
Best starting Web site for A.T. information: Check www.appalachiantrail.org and its links.
Road best traveled: U.S. Highway 302 through Crawford Notch (N.H.).
— Alan Solomon
THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL ROUTE
DAY 1
Katahdin Stream Falls, Maine, to Gorham, N.H.: 281 miles
The route: Maine Highways 11 and 6 to Maine Highway 16, which becomes New Hampshire Highway 16 into Gorham.
Overnight: Mt. Madison Motel, Gorham; $41.84.
Best grub: Fried clams, $8.95; Appalachian Trail Cafe, Millinocket, Maine.
DAY 2
Gorham to Manchester, Vt.: 285 miles
The route: New Hampshire Highway 16 to U.S. Highways 302 and 3 into Interstate Highway 93; I-93 to I-91 at St. Johnsbury, Vt., then on to I-89, briefly, to U.S. Highway 4 at White River Junction; U.S. 4 west to U.S. Highway 7 at Rutland, then U.S. 7 and 7A south into Manchester.
Overnight: Aspen Motel, Manchester; $81.75.
Best grub: Vermont farm-raised pheasant topped with a lingonberry and mandarin orange sauce, $22; Ye Olde Tavern, Manchester.
DAY 3
Manchester to Stroudsburg, Pa.: 296 miles
The route: U.S. Highway 7 south to Connecticut Highway 126 and Falls Village, Conn., then back to U.S. 7 into Interstate Highway 84, westbound; off at U.S. Highway 209 and south to Stroudsburg.
Overnight: Pocono Inn (a Best Western), Stroudsburg; $56.18.
Best grub: New England clam chowder (bowl), $3.50; New England Chowder House, Pittsfield, Mass.
DAY 4
Stroudsburg to Hagerstown, Md.: 271 miles
The route: Pennsylvania Highway 611 south to Interstate Highway 78 westbound, then U.S 15 south (with a quick hop to Gettysburg) to I-70; off at U.S. 340 (and another quick detour, following the signs, to Antietam), then back to I-70 into Hagerstown.
Overnight: Four Points/Sheraton, Hagerstown; $71.04
Best grub: Baked flounder stuffed with crab imperial, $17.95; Red Horse Steak House, Hagerstown.
DAY 5
Hagerstown to Harrisonburg, Va.: 161 miles
The route: Backroads to Harpers Ferry, W.Va.; then U.S. Highway 340 to Skyline Drive (Shenandoah National Park), and U.S. Highway 211 to Interstate Highway 81 and into Harrisonburg.
Overnight: Belle Meade Motel, Harrisonburg; $45.99.
Best grub: Fried oysters (dinner), $9.95; Pano’s, Harrisonburg.
DAY 6
Harrisonburg to Johnson City, Tenn.: 293 miles
The route: Interstate Highway 81 south to Virginia Highway 311, then north to near Catawba, Va.; back on 311 to I-81, continuing south to U.S. Highway 11 above Bristol, Va.; U.S. Highways 11 and 19, then 19W, into Johnson City.
Overnight: Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel, Johnson City; $56.70.
Best grub: Country-style steak, with mashed potatoes and green beans, $5.95; North Star Restaurant, Buchanan, Va.
DAY 7
Johnson City to Springer Mountain, Ga.: 317 miles
The route: U.S. Highways 11E and 321 to Gatlinburg, Tenn., then U.S. Highway 441 through Great Smoky Mountains National Park; U.S 441 and U.S. 23 briefly onto Interstate Highway 985, then Georgia Highway 60/U.S. 19 and U.S. Forest Service Road 42 (mostly gravel) to Springer Mountain.
Overnight: Courtyard by Marriott-Buckhead, Atlanta; $125.39.
Best grub: Barbecued pork sandwich, $2.95; Chad’s Bar-B-Q, Cumming, Ga.
Total miles: 1,904
Miles are actual miles driven but typically include meanderings. Lodgings listed as a guideline to prices and not necessarily as recommendations. Room prices are for one person, tax included; doubles are usually slightly higher. All prices subject to change.
— A.S.
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Email Alan Solomon: alsolly@aol.com
