From the overlook on the Maryland Heights Trail, Harpers Ferry looks like a dollhouse town, with colonials stacked along the street and up the hillside.  The lowest part of lower town is very much like a dollhouse town, only full-size.  Many of the buildings are unmanned exhibits, where visitors are free to mull around, seeing period objects and descriptions behind ropes or glass.  In the frigid temperatures of a January weekend, we had the place mostly to ourselves.

Turns out celebrating a friend’s twenty-fifth birthday with a long-weekend away at a historic farmhouse in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, was the rejuvenating retreat I did not realize I needed.  Our first stop was the A.T. Conservancy  in upper town.  Nestled along a hillside, the town of Harpers Ferry slopes from upper town down into lower town, where the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers meet at aptly named, The Point.  Harper’s Ferry being the psychological midpoint on the 2,180+ mile Appalachian Trail that runs from Georgia to Maine, the A.T. Conservancy is a wealth of history, information hub, and keeper of many trail names, faces, and stories.  

We learned that we could follow the A.T. from a quarter mile behind the building down into town, but with the frigid wind chill we opted to walk into lower town by sidewalk, so we could more readily find a restaurant for warmth and lunch.  We ended up at the Potomac Grille (I recommend the steak sandwich), and soon had warm toes and full bellies.  Already getting on into the afternoon, with sunset not much after 5p.m., we devoted our first day to exploring the rest of lower town. We walked through the exhibits and the John Brown museum, poked around in the eclectic collection of shops, and ventured out to the Point,  to scope out where we would begin our hike the next day. One shop that was especially fun to explore was True Treats Historic Candy, billed as "the nation’s only researched-based historic candy store specializing in candy from the first in history through the mid-1900s," and organized by time period.  With everything from hickory bark and bugs to Turkish delight to red hots and gummy bears, it was more like a candy museum with everything for sale.  

Our cabin-esque house just up the road from town was recently renovated, and blended modern amenities and cozy furniture with original beams and stone.  The sun was just setting as we arrived and transformed the neighboring hillside from winter brown to a glowing deep pink.  After a quick trip to a nearby grocery store for a few final supplies, the birthday girl treated the group to homemade shrimp scampi. We wound down from the day with wine in the hot tub in the backyard of our rental.

Day two began with a hearty breakfast at the house, lots of coffee, and bundling into layers of hiking clothes.  For a flat $10 fee, there are parking spaces at the train station in lower town, and it makes for a convenient starting point for heading out to the Maryland Heights Trail.  Crossing the river on the pedestrian portion of a train bridge offers gorgeous views from the start.  Down a metal spiral staircase, we followed the C&O Canal towpath several hundred yards before crossing the road and starting our ascent.  

With ice and icicles along the trail and temperatures in the twenties, we opted to do a shortened route, following the green blaze up past the Naval Battery, then the red blaze of the Overlook Cliff Trail out to the Overlook Cliff, then back the way we came.  With an overall  4.2 miles roundtrip, the trail was strenuous enough that we unzipped and re-zipped coats, and alternated wearing and stowing gloves and hats several times along the way.  

Being winter, the leafless trees afforded partial views from a good portion of the trail that would otherwise be blocked by greenery.  Even so, the overlook was striking, with sweeping views of the converging rivers, town, and surrounding mountains.  We found good sitting rocks in the sunshine and enjoyed our packed lunches with a view, before following the trail back down the way we came.  

By the time we made it back to town, it was late afternoon and my toes and nose felt nearly frozen.  We went in search of hot drinks and snacks and found ourselves wandering into the The Mountain House of The Town’s Inn.  The first floor is the Town’s Hostel (not that we knew that walking in), so it felt a bit odd, as if we were just wandering into someone’s house. We were pleasantly surprised when we found the cozy Mountain House Cafe on the second floor.  Soothed by the warm and reviving power of hot tea, cocoa, grilled cheese sandwiches, and cheese grits, we eventually ventured back out onto a portion of the A.T. that climbed up from lower town, past the ruins of St. John's Episcopal Church, and up to Jefferson Rock.  With the sun setting, we made our way back to the car and back to our rental house.  For dinner, we took a short drive back to upper town to The Anvil Restaurant, where we feasted with crab dip, crab cakes, mashed potatoes, and wonderfully spiced cooked carrots.  The chocolate bomb dessert we took back to the house lasted maybe thirty seconds, tops.

On our final morning, we used up the last of our breakfast supplies and tidied up the house, before heading back to DC.  Driving back into the city, the sharp contrast between sleepy Harpers Ferry and the constant bustle of the DC reminded me how much I appreciate both atmospheres, and how much exploring I still want to do.