riverside mist Full-size picture!
Late in the morning, down in the valley: the river is still covered with mist.

Maryland Mist

  • Day Twelve: MD State
    Hunting Lands. Last night
    on the ridge. Should I be
    camping here?
The trail leaves Tuscarora Mountain and the PA State Game Lands just north of where the mountain peters out on the Maryland border. It descends through fields that could be rural countryside anywhere and crosses the state highway just south of a country church.

A quarter mile further and the road it is following plunges into a 20-foot-wide stream and out the other side. Hey wait a moment: this is a public road. Where's the bridge? There's no way of getting out of this dry! All of the rest of the trail to Hancock, MD, is road walk, of one kind or another. At least most of it is dirt or gravel. After a mile or two on the hard asphalt, the trail climbs back to the ridge--is it the Blue Mountain again? I'm not sure--which it follows into Indian Springs. At the crest of the ridge, a crudely painted sign announces the PA-MD state line.

The narrow gravel road passes through Western Maryland Sportsmen's Club lands and then state hunting lands. It's getting late in the afternoon, and suitable camping spots are only going to get harder to come by. I climb away from the road and pitch my tent on an abandoned logging road.

The next morning is the meteor shower. But I'm a bit late waking up, and the mist is amazingly thick. Even by late morning as I am descending into the valley for the last time, the fog is showing little sign of clearing off.

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view from the campsite view the other way
Too late for the meteor shower! Not much to see anyway, but God, it's beautiful!