Well, I finally got my good bear story!  I was sleeping in my hammock about a hundred yards uphill from the Gravel Springs Hut in Shenandoah, and had just woken up around six in the morning.  It still wasn't light out, so I decided to go back to sleep.  I woke up again fifteen minutes later to this "whuffing" noise right next to my head, lifted my head up out of the hammock, and came face to face with a BABY BEAR CUB!!!!   My involuntary scream  (if I was a guy I would claim it was manly, but I'm not, and it wasn't) scared the little fellow probably as much as he had scared me, and he took off running across the campsite and straight up a tree about ten yards away. 

As I gathered my wits, I heard a noise in the brush, and watched as a HUMONGOUS MAMA BEAR ambled out to sit under the tree the baby bear had fled to.  I looked at her.  She looked at me.  I wasn't exactly frightened, as she seemed more irked with the antics of the little bear than she seemed upset about me.  The cub made some funny kind of mewling noises, and then the mama bear looked up at him and made what I can only term as an "exasperated sigh" at which he backed down the tree, far more slowly than he had gone up it, and they ambled away down the trail toward the shelter.

After sitting in awe for several minutes, I got up and went down to the shelter, but nobody else had seen the bears.  I later read through the shelter log, and apparently several others had encountered the same bears, either in walking to the shelter or in the early morning.  However, no one had had any confrontations and the bears had not been aggressive towards anybody, so I think it's proof that if you do not feed them or allow them to encounter human food, black bears really aren't a threat.  I will say that everyone has been doing great at following "best bear practices" from what I've seen, and I'm glad now that we're so conscientious!

As I write this, I'm sitting in the Appalachian Trail Conservancy's office in Harper's Ferry, WV.  It's wonderful here - they have a hiker lounge with air conditioning, places to charge your phone, and cold drinks for $0.50.  Essentially, hiker heaven.

"Halfway" on the AT is defined in a few different ways, as the length of the trail changes every year due to re-routing; this year's official mileage is 2185.3.  There is a nice big sign in the middle of the woods that signifies the "halfway" point, but it's from a few years ago and is actually a couple of miles north of this year's halfway point.

At this year's "actual" halfway point, there was a laminated 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper taped to a post stuck in some rocks that marked the momentous occasion.  It wasn't really photo worthy.    The most important "halfway" for me, though, is Harper's Ferry, which is the "psychological" halfway and means that I'm definitely counting miles down instead of up from this point on!  Only 1019 to go........

I've decided to set my end goal as November 15th, though I hope I beat that by a couple of days.  To accomplish this requires that I maintain a 14 mile per day average for the rest of my hike.  My current average since beginning is 14.2 miles per day, so I feel that this is achievable.  I'm currently ahead of quite a few people that I started with, and while I sometimes miss the companionship, I'm proud of my pace and I intend to stick with it.  Occasionally people have chided me to, "Slow down and hang out more."  One guy yelled after me as I was jogging past him, "It's about the journey, not the destination!"  I have several thoughts on this:

1. I met two northbound hikers in Maine who were literally running through the woods during a rainshower, and they looked like they were having a blast.  They flew into the shelter, yanked their shoes off, shoveled food into their faces, yanked their shoes back on, and were gone again before Molly (Smiley) and I had even begun to make our lunch.  As they were eating, they grilled us on our hike so far.  One of them asked, "When do you want to finish?  And dear god don't tell me Thanksgiving.  There's a limit to how long this will be fun, and you want to finish well before you get to that point."  While his tone was somewhat abrasive, in retrospect I appreciate the concept, and am glad he put it so simply.  I want to be sipping cocoa on a couch somewhere planning my next adventure when it starts to get cold, not freezing my rear off on some peak in North Carolina.
2. Another northbound hiker was far gentler in his approach.  He was in southern Maine, carrying a tiny pack and wearing no shirt, but expected to finish both the AT and PCT in a single year.  He told me, "Pick a date you want to finish by, and stick to it.  Hike until midnight if you have to; do a forty mile day.  Spend yourself.  Spend all of yourself.  There's nobility in that." I like this thought.
3. Sometimes moving quickly in the woods is special.  Really special.  As in, the trail is gently downhill, and without thinking about it, you start moving faster, picking your steps intentionally, and as you move faster and faster, you achieve a kind of "zen" state in which your brain and body are both fully focused on the task at hand, and the trail slips past under your feet as your mind opens up to child-like creativity.  It's almost as though you're a waterfall on the face of the mountain.  Absolute bliss.
   
   So, to Mr. It's-About-The-Journey, I say, "My journey is different than yours," and keep right on running!