Hitting the Trail again

Air's a bit thin up here!

The Appalachian Trail keeps following us. We bumped into it near the northern end of its 2200 miles in Maine, we walked a bit of it in New Hampshire, we crossed it in Vermont and came close in Pennsylvania. Here we are 5000 feet up in the Great Smoky Mountains near the bottom end (1,972 miles south of Katadhin Mountain) on the Tennessee/North Carolina border at a place called New Found Gap. Here it looks broad and easy to follow but in the more remote areas it's not difficult to go off piste! Every year a number of hardy folk set off to walk the whole trail in one go - to ordinary hikers these long distance fiends are known as 'thru-hikers' and generally take around 6 months to do it. I'm sure they'd do it quicker if they ran it!

Nearly a Bridge too Far

Well we have crossed one of the modern wonders of the world - the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel which is basically a 17 mile long bridge with a couple of one mile tunnels strategically placed so that big ships can get through into the bay. Built all of 50 years ago this makes the Severn bridge look like Lego.

Honk, honk!

What is also a wonder of the world but more of a natural one is the sight we saw today at Assateague Island, on the Atlantic coast, of thousands upon thousands of Snow Geese who are wintering here - the noise they make is astonishing and they must be the noisiest geese of the lot. Apart from their loud continual honking they also make a strange grumbling moise that sounds like heavy traffic from a way off but is actually quite close. We walked 4 miles round a huge lake that seemed chockablock with them. And then, "THEY'VE SCORED!" a sudden eruption of sound just as you'd hear from outside Old Trafford when the Reds have scored a goal, and the geese started to take off in squadrons heading off into the evening sky - beautiful skeins of stately birds drifting into the distance - (gosh I could get quite poetic about them, better move on then quick!)

Where's the Trap?

Assateague Island is also famous for its ponies. We're staying at Chincoteague (pronounced Shincoteague by the locals.)  In the summer it's full of tourists, but the only tourists in mid December are us! Chincoteague is home to the annual pony run where the wild ponies over on Assateague are herded through the channel separating Assateague from Chincoteague islands.

Close to where we are staying is the NASA complex where moon rockets are fired from. Talking to the locals it seems a subject of pride for them that something so grand happens here - but they're a bit circumspect about the rocket failure that happened a few weeks ago on October 29th. 'Oh they have now got funding for a relaunch in  few months time!' And what happened to the supplies that were destined for the Space Station with the international crew of six? 'Oh the Russians went up a few days later with some stuff.' What about the Christmas Cards?

More Lego!

Now what I hadn't realised was  this contraption has been in space for 14 years and there are 2 Americans, a German and 3 Russians up there. There've been no Brits on board but an ex-Army chappie called Tim Peake is scheduled to go in 2015 - rather him than me!