July 24

The party's over

We woke up to a beautiful sunrise this morning.  Across the street there was a good bagel place the guys at the fire station had told us about.  Taylor ham, egg, and cheese on an everything bagel.  When you're in Jersey, you have to get a bagel, and the Taylor ham sandwiches are the best.  That's what the firemen told us, and boy, were they right.  The post office was right there too.  My pack was feeling really heavy with all the food I was carrying.  I had to make a tough decision, but I decided to mail the disco ball home.  I had carried it over 400 miles, and it just wasn't getting enough use.  I'm holding on to my speakers though, so if we pick up more glow sticks in towns, we can still have a good party.  We didn't start back to hiking until noon.  As it always goes leaving town, we had a climb right away.  In the late afternoon, we got up onto a long ridgeline.  The trail went on for miles just climbing up and down massive rock formations.  Sometimes you would have to climb up some craggy parts and hop over and around boulders.  Other sections were just hiking on top of long stretches of flat rock.  We were walking right down the rocky exposed spine of the mountain.  We came across a marker painted on a rock.  "NY/NJ".  Another state down.  New York greeted us with more huge rocks.  At one point the trail ended at a rock wall, continuing further, about 20 feet up.  There was a ladder that helped you get up half way, but then you just had to toss the trekking poles up to the top and pull yourself up and over.  The rocky walk along the ridge continued for the rest of the evening, until we came down off the mountain to a road crossing.  We got a ride into Greenwood Lake, NY, which was a really pretty little town.  I had an excellent chimichanga at Mango's, a Latin restaurant in town.  We heard from a former thru-hiker that we could camp at a baseball field in town.  Getting to the park after dark, a police officer stopped us to ask what we were doing.  I don't think you're 'supposed' to camp there, but he didn't give us a hard time since we weren't up to any trouble.  New Jersey was awesome, and so far the transition into New York has been just as beautiful.  Crossing into a new state.  4 months on the trail!

Welcome to NY!

July 23

Vernon

Wow, I slept in really late this morning.  Slims and Apache were already packed up.  Tink and Rainbow had already hiked 5 miles this morning and were here at the Murray property with us.  I got a shower, ate breakfast, and started rolling.  It's warm and sunny.  We were all planning to stop in the next town, Unionville, NY, to do a resupply.  They all got out ahead of me, and I ended up hiking past the road that they took into town across the state line.  I ended up going to NJ 284, and having to backtrack down the highway about a mile or so to get into town.  I resupplied at the general store there.  They had a good selection of hiker food, but it was really expensive.  $2 for pasta sides, $2 packets of tuna, that kind of thing.  I got an awesome chicken salad sub from their deli for lunch.  The rest of the crew was just next door at the pizza place.  I saw Tink walking down the road looking distraught.  She was upset because she was beginning to think that she needed to start churning out big miles in order to finish her hike.  She wanted to finish in the first part of September, and she thought that would mean she'd be hiking past us, and she'd start having to start thinking about her hike as miles, miles, miles.  I told her she should call home and talk things out, and what ever happened, "one in four!".  That's the mantra.  Only about one out of four thru-hiker are successful in finishing their thru-hike.  She had said that to me before when I was having a bad day as a reminder to keep pushing to make sure I was one of the "one in four" to make it.  After lunch, the guys headed back out to the trail where they had come in to town, and I headed back down the road to where I needed to get back on the trail.  The sky was starting to get a little grey.  I hope it doesn't rain.  There was a series of road walks that came up next, then the trail dipped into the Wallkill River nature preserve area.  This was a really pretty, swampy area.  I saw a bird that from a distance looked like a heron.  There was also a turtle right in the trail that I had to be careful not to step on as I walked by.  Then the trail started climbing up Pochuck Mountain.  Just at the junction where a side trail went to the shelter there, Tink was sitting there waiting on us.  She was in much better spirits now after calling home and figuring some things out so that she didn't need to have such a tight deadline to finish her hike.  It was an all smiles, I'm sooo happy to see you guys, kind of moment.  We all walked together the rest of the afternoon up and down some more rolling mountains.  We eventually came to a really nice boardwalk that went through a huge swamp.  The sun was setting over the mountains.  The boardwalk meandered for almost a mile through the swamp.  Cattails and grasses all around.  Birds singing.  Insects chirping.  The blue-pink sky soon started to turn dark.  Thunder started rumbling in the distance.  It was beautiful.  We made it to a road crossing at NJ 94 and the rain started coming down in buckets.  It was just before dark, and two cars pulled over for us.  The super-rare double-hitch.  Tough to pull off with a group of five.  We went into the town of Vernon, NJ.  The fire station there will let hikers tent in their yard.  The firemen there were really nice, and happy to have us.  They said they used to get a lot more hikers, but ever since the church in town opened up a hostel, most of the hikers go there.  The wind was really starting to kick up, and the rain kept pouring down.  Everyone else did fine setting up their tents, but Apache and I had trouble with our hammock options.  He was able to string his up between a tree and a telephone pole.  I used my trekking poles to set up my rain fly like an A-frame tent.  First time doing that, but it was a success.  We went to a Chinese place for dinner, then Burger King for ice cream.  I got a cardboard box from them, which I broke down at camp and used as a ground cloth under my tarp.  Sleeping on a cardboard box.  Good, now I can check that off on the hobo list.  Haha.  Hey, it kept my sleeping pad from getting wet.

Camping at the Vernon fire station

July 22

The Secret Shelter

We woke up early, surprisingly.  I headed down to the shelter to use the privy, and saw Slims and Tink.  They had gotten an earlier start leaving DWG than we did, and we hadn't caught up until now.  I hiked up to Sunrise Mountain, where there was a nice pavilion that offered a good place to sit and take in the outstanding views of the surrounding mountains and valleys.  I kept moving and made it to the next shelter to take a snack break.  There was another hiker there, who I had met briefly back in Shenandoah NP.  He was getting off the trail for this year, but want to do some trail magic for hikers.  There were a lot of other hikers here at the shelter, and we all went down to the next road crossing where "One" had his car parked.  He had an awesome spread of treats for us.  Soda, water, beer, hard boiled eggs, all kinds of chips, snack cakes, string cheese, and a 'hiker box' full of supplies if you needed to grab extra zip lock bags, toilet paper, first aid supplies, etc.  It was really nice of him to do all that.  I was so glad to be in the right place at the right time for all those treats.  Later that afternoon, I made it to High Point State Park.  The office there will give thru-hikers a free soda.  We all left there and made it up the mountain to a 220 foot tall stone tower.  This is the highest point in the state of NJ.  Great 360 degree views.  There were a good number of tourists up there too, as there is a paved road that you can take right to the top of the mountain.  We took a long break there.  The sun was starting to get a little low in the sky, so we kept on hiking.  Rainbow Eyes was having some problems with blisters, so he and Tink stayed back for a while.  They were probably just going to hike a mile or so to the next shelter.  Slims, Apache, and I kept on going.  Around dusk, we made it to the Murray property, the site of the "secret shelter" I had heard about before I started this hike.  It's a great place with a shower, a sleeping cabin, and huge open fields for tenting.  I was kind of disappointed though that it wasn't really a secret at all as to it's location on the trail.  It's listed in the guidebook, and on trail information kiosks back at High Point park.  I found a nice area below the cabin to string up my hammock, and I cooked a quick dinner.  Since the weather was nice, and I wasn't sure if that would be the case over the next few days, I decided this would be a good spot for another disco party.  I was far enough away from everyone else that they wouldn't hear the music.  There were a lot of other hikers here tonight.  I invited people to come down to my campsite, and a handful of them checked out what was going on.  Everyone was pretty surprised to see a disco ball hanging from a tree branch, glow sticks, and music playing from my speakers.  I think they thought I was kidding when I said I was carrying a disco party.  Haha.  Did about 18 miles or so today, and loving every bit of it in New Jersey. 

Approaching the monument at High Point, NJ

  

July 21

I love NJ!

Packed up a wet tarp, put on wet clothes and wet shoes, and started hiking this morning.  At least the rain had stopped.  Just after leaving camp, there were excellent views along the ridge just before coming to Catfish firetower.  We climbed up to the top, but the door to the observation cabin was locked.  We were trying to remember when the last firetower we were in.  I'm pretty sure I haven't climbed one since the Smokies.  This is cool.  The views were great.  We took a pretty long break up there, but got moving again down more of the beautiful Jersey trail.  A few miles later, we passed through a swampy area.  I noticed in the middle of the water there was a huge mound of logs.  A beaver lodge!  Some chewed tree stumps in the area that I saw confirmed it.  There's beaver in this area.  That's so awesome!  I hope I see one.  We stopped for lunch at Blue Mnt Lakes Rd.  There was a pump there for us to get water, and the sun was shining brightly.  A good spot to eat, and let our wet socks, shoes, and gear dry out.  More amazing trail this afternoon.  The views along Rattlesnake Mountain were spectacularly good.  We eventually came down off the ridge to a road crossing at Branchville, NJ.  We walked a short way to Gyp's Tavern, where we got dinner.  Really good, cheap burgers, 'freedom' fries, and such.  We ate on the covered porch around back, right on the lake.  Great setting for dinner as the sun went down.  We got back on the trail and started night hiking.  At the top of the first climb, we made it to another firetower.  We accidentally woke up Dingo, who was tenting near the tower.  I climbed up the tower to soak in the views.  It was a little chilly, but the sky was clear.  So many stars.  After a long break, we finally made it to the Gren Anderson shelter.  We tried to be as quiet as possible walking into camp since it was around 11pm now.  We set up for the night, put our food bags in the metal bear box down near the shelter.  We had covered about 20 miles today, and what a beautiful day it was!  I am so impressed with the trail in NJ so far, and I'm looking forward to see what's next.

Beautiful hiking along the ridge, near Rattlesnake Mountain in NJ

July 20

GTL

Had breakfast downstairs again this morning, then we hung out lazily in the room watching TV and resting.  We've really been up to speed on our pop music this entire trip.  Every time we stay in a hotel, VH1 is always on.  It's a dark, rainy morning and we are all dreading the inevitable.  But we're not spending anymore time here, so the boots went on, pack covers and rain jackets went on too, and we started walking toward the trail.  Getting out of town wasn't easy though.  Stopped for lunch at the diner, then dessert at the Bakery.  The trail followed a road where it dead ended just before the busy interstate.  The trail then continued directly on the interstate.  Only a waist-high concrete wall separated us from the traffic speeding by as we walked down the highway.  It was odd to see the juxtaposition of the "AT" and the "EZ Pass" toll lanes on the road.  After crossing over the river, we were now in New Jersey.  Woo-hoo!  I turned around, walking backward for a bit, to fist pump at some of the cars flying by us.  I got a couple to beep at me.  Haha!  We're nowhere near the "shore", but I was hoping someone with Jersey tags would get it.  That amused me.  Anyway, the rain was still drizzling as we entered the DWG recreational area, where we stopped by the park office to check out some of the exhibits.  Apparently there's a bald eagle in the area that was seen a couple days ago swooping down to the river to catch fish.  That would be so great to see one in the wild.  The next section of the trail was really pretty.  We crossed into a parking area, then off into the woods, climbing up the Kittatinny ridge.  Along the climb, the trail paralleled a beautiful cascading brook for a while.  The sky was still grey and misty.  I was wet, but happy.  After a few miles, we made it up to the ridge, and eventually came to Sunfish Pond.  The pond was so pretty.  It was still rainy, and fairly windy.  We could see small clouds blowing quickly over the surface of the pond.  We stopped for a break, and noticed huge highbush blueberries along the shore, so we spent a while picking as many of the delicious berries as we could.  The trail continued further along the ridgeline, with more smaller blueberry bushes and ferns lining the path.  Really pretty.  Near the end of the day, we had made it to the Mohican Outdoor Center.  The staff there said that even for thru-hikers there was a fee to camp there.  We decided to move on, and camp for free in the woods at the first bit of flat ground that we found.  The rain had pretty much stopped, but everything was wet.  We set up camp for the night with about 10 miles of NJ done.

First day in NJ, at Sunfish Pond

July 19

Still in the Gap

The Pocono Inn in Delaware Water Gap was a great deal.  Woke up in time for the free continental breakfast downstairs.  I started to get packed up to start rolling out of town.  The urge to get out of PA finally was strong.  Well, Rainbow and Apache weren't moving as quickly.  The hotel had a check out time of noon.  That was really dangerous.  On top of that, they would bump it to 2pm if you asked them to.  They were content to zero.  I was really wanting to just start hiking, and was really considering just moving on, but then they mentioned that there was a library in the nearby city of Stroudsburg were I could get some blogging done.  I knew I was way behind, and hadn't really figured out where I would be able to get online in the next few days, so that convinced me to stay.  Guitar Man dropped me off at the library where I posted up for the afternoon.  After returning back to DWG later that night, I heard from Highking that he was going to be leaving the trail in the morning.  He's been having bad ankle problems for the past week or so, and it's only getting worse.  That sucks, but he's hoping to get healed up and meet us up north in a bit.

Hot Dog and a slice of Apple Pie at the Bakery in DWG for $2.49

July 18

Water Gap

It started to rain a little bit last night.  Apache and I woke up and scurried to put up our rain flies.  Woke up this morning to a sunrise.  A really hot sunrise.  I couldn't sleep any longer since I was sweating.  It felt like someone had opened an oven door.  That was enough motivation for me.  I ate a honeybun quickly, downed a warm lemonade drink mix, packed up, and got to hiking.  I knew Delaware Water Gap, Pa. was only about 6 miles away, and so I just wanted to suck it up, deal with the heat, and get there ASAP.  I made it to Mt. Minsi and took a long break.  I was kind of surprised how long it took everyone to catch up to me.  The climb down from the mountain, into the gap, was really nice. There were a lot of hemlocks and rhododendrons.  The dense leaf cover provided a little bit of respite from the heat.  I soon came to a small break in the trees, and from the top of a rock I got my first view of Delaware Water Gap.  The Delaware River was several hundred feet below me.  The interstate mirrored the river's flow through the gap.  A similarly shaped peak to the mountain I was standing on, was just on the other side of the river, climbing out of the gap into New Jersey.  I can't wait to get to New Jersey!  Now there's something I thought I'd never hear anyone say.  I've heard the trail is surprisingly nice there though, and anything would be better than PA that's for sure.  We made it down the rest of the mountain, and into the quaint town.  The Presbyterian church has a free hiker hostel in the basement, so we stopped there.  There's tenting areas out back, and even a shelter.  There's also a bunk room inside, a living room area, bathroom, and the all important shower. They had an ice cold jug of water outside for hikers too.  Nice place.  There were already a bunch of other hikers there.  A trail angel named Guitar Man was there helping hikers out.  He told us about a coupon you could get for a hiker rate at a motel in town.  Apache, Rainbow Eyes, and I decided that some air conditioning sounded like a great idea.  $45 bucks split.  That's mad cheap for up north.  Good deal.  Took a shower.  Guitar Man took us to Walmart to resupply.  Glad to be in town.

Delaware Water Gap

July 17

Another success story

After the late night party last night, we got a slow start this morning.  The hiking wasn't bad.  Flat terrain along the ridge.  Typical rocks, but not the super Pennsylvania style ones.  Still pretty hot outside though, and when we came out of the woods down to the road that goes into Wind Gap, Pa. I was sweating buckets again.  The consensus was that we wanted to go into town.  We soon got a hitch, and got dropped off at a shopping center that had a Chinese restaurant.  I had General Tso's chicken and an egg roll.  Then we all went to the grocery store to do some more resupply.  I didn't really need anything really, so I just picked up some donuts and Italian ices to snack on.  We got another hitch back to the trail.  I can't believe it.  We actually came into a town, ate lunch, resupplied, and didn't stay in town.  Impressive.  The climb out of Wind Gap was short, and we were soon back up onto familiar ridge walking.  I only left town with a liter of water. Bad idea.  I was trying to ration my water the whole way out of town.  The afternoon was dragging on.  It was hot, and rocky.  Surprise.  I just didn't feel like I was getting anywhere.  I stopped at a place that I saw in my guidebook and realized I was still about 5 miles away from the shelter.  Ugh.  About 2 miles after that, I ran out of water.  It was getting late in the afternoon.  I was really thirsty, but I think my brain kicked my body a supply of adrenaline.  I turned on some tunes in my earphones, and with a new burst of energy I was flying down the trail.  I stopped at a sign that said "Springer Mountain 1277".  Wow!  That felt great.  Around the next bend I had to hit the breaks all of a sudden.  Just in front of me was a young deer, a buck with velvety new antlers.  I waited for him to move off the trail, then kept cruising.  I got to Kirkridge shelter, threw off my pack, and headed up to the water source.  I immediately chugged 40 ounces.  Then I filled up 3.5 more liters and carried it down to the shelter.  Kokopelli and Brightflower were there.  It was good to hear that they did well over the rock climb yesterday.  Kokopelli said his dog, Dee Dee, had a blast climbing the rocks, and would find her own way up the mountain, often sitting there waiting on him to catch up.  Haha.  We saw in the guidebook that there was a campsite 0.3 miles ahead, with a view.  We had plenty of water so we pushed on.  What a good idea.  This spot was awesome.  There was a pretty nice sized clearing that looked down into the valley to the east.  I had my hammock strung up just on the edge of the clearing, at the edge of the slope.  The starts were out.  We saw the faint shimmer of a satellite pass overhead.  It's been a long time since I've been able to see the stars this clearly at night.  Turns out that we're leaving PA on a pretty good note.

Campsite just past Kirkridge shelter.

July 16

PA disco party

We did well, and got a pretty good start this morning.  Got a hitch back to the trail pretty quickly.  As soon as we got back into the woods again, we started climbing.  After a short distance, Slims and Apache were up ahead of me checking out a view.  At the base of the rock scramble, you could look back behind you and see Lehigh Gap.  The road, and the Lehigh River were already hundreds of feet below us.  We broke down our trekking poles and strapped them to our packs.  We wouldn't need them for this section.  I took my time here.  In several places I had to reach up and pull myself up and over a ledge.  Then shimmy sideways across another narrow, precarious rock.  Then more walking over rocks and boulders.  Ever so often, I'd stop and look back.  It was exhilarating.  I felt like a mountain goat.  I laughed.  I couldn't believe this was the trail.  It was awesome, fun, and pretty terrifying all at the same time.  The trail was blazed fairly well through the climb, white blazes just painted on the rocks.  I did lose it once though, climbing about 150 feet up the boulders before coming to a dead end and realizing that I hadn't seen a blaze in a while.  I went back down the way I came until I found a blaze again, and soon figured out where I had made a mistake, and got back on the trail.  After the summit, the trail leveled out onto a rocky, exposed ridge.  This whole area is around an area that had been a zinc mine or something.  The trees are all dead and it's nothing but rocks.  Some shrubs and trees are trying to make a recovery.  We got back into the woods eventually.  There were some nice blackberry bushes.  We were a little worried they might be polluted, but we risked it.  They were delicious.  We also saw some baby wild turkeys fly away.  We stopped at a campsite for lunch.  Rainbow Eyes was there.  He was getting a late start, trying to dry out his wet gear from the storm last night.  Tink and Samson had camped nearby too.  It was good to hear that everyone had managed to get past the climb before the storm hit.  The rest of the afternoon was nice and cool.  Relatively cool, rather.  The sun stayed hidden behind clouds.  All the way to the Delps Trail, was really nice, with lots of ferns, and open forest that you could see a long way into.  Not overgrown at all.  Sure enough though the trail brought back the rocks.  Late this afternoon I kept on walking over all kinds of rocks.  Some especially horrible ones are really small, but have just tiny, sharp, knife-like points sticking up out of the ground.  Hit a few of those in a row the wrong way and you're swearing up and down the trail.  We made it to the Leroy Smith shelter after a respectable 16 mile day.  The first water source there was dry, so it took everyone a long time to get water at the source that was about 0.4 miles away.  Regardless, we found a really great tenting area away from the shelter.  The trees were really far apart, and the woods had a open, airy feel.  There was a nice fire ring.  I realized that we were soon going to be out of Pennsylvania soon, and hadn't broken out the disco ball in this state.  So I used my bear bag rope, and hung up the ball and the motor from a couple of trees.  Once it got dark and everyone had eaten dinner, I plugged up the mp3 player to my speakers, queued up a dubstep playlist, broke out a bunch of glow sticks, and we all danced around.  The headlamp shining on the disco ball shot hundreds of spinning white lights all around us.  We set up a headlamp under a green bowl and turned it on flashing mode, so we had a cool green strobe light.  We all twirled around the glow sticks in the dark to the beat.  It was awesome.  So much fun that it made carrying this thing this far totally worth it.  Word is slowly getting around on the trail, so I hope we can start recruiting some more people to disco party it up with us later down the trail.

Apache starting the climb out of Lehigh Gap.

July 15

In Jail

So we slept in a bit this morning, and hiked in a mile to where the trail crossed the highway.  It was only a mile into Palmerton, Pa., but we hitched, since the road here had no shoulder to walk on and was really busy.  The downtown area of this little town was really pretty.  First things first.  We went in to the laundromat to wash our funky clothes.  Then we went across the street to the Borough Building, which had a free hiker hostel in the basement.  It was Sunday though, and the building was locked.  So we had to go down to the police station and have an office let us in.  He took our names, and made copies of all of our IDs.  This hostel is called "The Jail House".  It was never used as a jail though.  It's more like a civic building, used for town meetings and such.  There's an old basketball court on the main floor, and showers.  Getting clean again was amazing.  The pressure on the shower heads would peel any remaining dirt and funk off of you that any soap missed.  We needed to get some lunch, so of course, stopping at the ice cream shop was a great idea.  Brownie sundae, with mint chocolate chip and German chocolate cake ice cream scoops.  Warm, gooey brownies had just come out of the oven.  OMG.  I then got real lunch, at the diner.  Really good cheesesteak sandwich.  We just hung out all day, walking around town, and chillin' at the hostel.  Rainbow Eyes and his friend headed out.  Tink and Samson headed out soon after.  Slims, Apache, and I started packing up, and filled up all of our water bottles.  As soon as we started to leave, the skies started to get dark.  A massive thunderstorm blew through the area.  We decided not to hike.  I hope everyone else is okay.  Especially since the climb out from Palmerton is really treacherous.  There's about a 1000 foot climb up an exposed rock scramble.  Lots of hand over hand climbing.  We didn't want to do this part in the heat of the day, but doing it in a storm this severe was a bad idea too.  The rain settled down a bit, and we went to a local pizza joint to get dinner.  Palmerton Pizza is amazing.  Best I've had on the trail.  Some of the best I've had, ever.  The owner running the shop there even gave us a bunch of extra slices to take with us as she was closing up for the night.  On the way back, we stopped at the Country Harvest grocery store for a small resupply.  If you tell them you are a hiker they give you an orange.  Love Palmerton!

The Jail House hostel in Palmerton, Pa.

July 14

Pennsylvania Blues

It rained a little bit last night.  I had to get up and string up my rain fly over my hammock.  Nothing was too wet this morning.  The sun was blazing again and dried everything out soon enough.  We made it a few miles to a road crossing and stopped for lunch and a little restaurant that was in view of the trail.  Good food, cold tea, but a little on the pricey side.  Kept on moving.  The trail has started to get exceptionally rocky.  It's expected, I mean, you are in the mountains and all, but PA brings it to a whole 'nother level.  An area called the 'Knife Edge' was particularly tricky.  Climbing up boulders, in some places on just inches of tread space. Playing the find the white blaze game, as you shimmied from one huge rock to the next.  It was kind of like Dragon's Tooth all over again.  And did I mention that it's still obscenely hot?  Every day I'm totally soaked in sweat.  Right from the start.  All day long.  Feet are hurting from all the rocks.  And the water....oh, man the water.  It's a constant guessing game of will the next spring be dry.  Pennsylvania is rough.  It's starting to take a toll on me.  I know a lot of it has to do with the heat.  Than makes everything worse.  And I know it's going to be a mental challenge to force my body to keep going.  All I can think about is getting to town.  Shower.  And I really, really need to do laundry.  I smell like death again already.  We all met up and stopped for a break at Bear Rocks.  There were some really cool views there in all directions.  Haven't seen a view this nice since Virginia I think.  That started to lift my spirits.  I also made a funny video, a-la Crocodile Hunter/Bear Grylls.  That had everyone laughing, and certainly did a lot to brighten my mood.  There was a lot of spray paint graffiti at Bear Rocks, so that wasn't good to see.  Idiots.  We kept moving, with the comforts of town luring us.  We passed the section around Bake Oven Knob.  Crappy looking, old shelter there.  Lots of day hikers in the area.  There's more graffiti on a lot of the rock here too.  More broken glass.  Ugh.  Pisses me off to see all of that.  At least there was one more really pretty section around South Mountain.  We made it to the George Outerbridge shelter a dusk.  It was only a mile into town from there.  The shelter was another older one, and looked pretty dumpy, but we stayed there.  We weren't too sure if we'd be able to get a spot in town this late at the free hostel, and we sure weren't getting a hotel room.  Rates are starting to get really high up north.  I can't wait to get out of PA.  The rocks, the bugs, the heat, the water.

In case you didn't know where you were.... (not pictured - male genitalia, "get high", and peace signs)

   

July 13

Good hikers

We got off to a good start this morning.  Full, heavy food bags.  So it goes when you hike out of town.  We stopped for a second to check out this swimming hole on the river we had heard about, called Peace Rock.  It was a really huge drop from a rock ledge, into the river, but we didn't do it.  The surrounding area was a dump.  Trash everywhere.  Apparently locals come here a lot and tear the place up.  Broken glass, full bags of garbage, dirty diapers.  Gross.  So, we kept on moving.  Had a fairly steep climb out of town.  Passed a Pocahontas, and Minnehaha, spring.  Didn't get water.  Bad move.  Had to ration water, and it was hot again.  Stopped for a quick break at Pulpit Rock, where a local astronomy enthusiast was looking at some sun spots.  Soon after, I arrived at the Pinnacle, where Slims and Apache were taking a lunch break.  We took in the nice views there, and climbed around on the rocks.  We found a cave that started at the top of the cliff and dropped about 30 feet into the mountain, before leading back out to the side of the cliff again.  After that nice break, we pushed on to Hawk Mountain road.  We went 0.2 miles east on the road to the Eckville shelter.  It's a really nice shelter on an ATC property, with a bunk house, flush toilet, and shower room.  Rainbow Eyes was getting back on the trail there, and was waiting for us when we arrived.  A friend of his was there two, planning to hike with us for a couple days.  Glad to see him back on the trail, and to hear that his ankle is feeling much better.  It would have been easy to call it a day there, but we kept on going, leaving the nice shelter and shower behind.  What were we thinking?  This isn't our style at all.  We're actually doing some big miles today, like real thru-hikers.  We finally stopped at Allentown Hiking Club shelter after pulling a 22.2 mile day.  We managed to get that far, even with taking a ton of breaks.  Go us!

Doing some spelunking at The Pinnacle.

July 12

I thought we said no more zeroes

So a while back, in Carlisle, after our indulgent side trip to Hershey Park, we kind of said that we needed to get through the rest of Pennsylvania before taking another zero.  I guess that makes us liars.  We zeroed in Port Clinton, haha!  The camping at the pavilion was so nice, and Can-Do Will-Do was so great to take us where ever we needed to go, that we just ended up staying for the day.  Apache and I had been talking about craving some Cracker Barrel, and sure enough, there was one 3 miles away in Hamburg.  So we all ate lunch there.  Mom would be proud, haha!  I got the big country breakfast, and a buttermilk pancake breakfast.  Oink.  So worth it.  Next we went across the highway to a Cabella's store.  Some of us needed to replace some gear or pick up a few items, so this big-box outfitter would be great.  We were in for a real treat though.  Hamburg just so happens to be the home of the largest Cabella's in the USA.  This place was ridiculous.  Like Disneyland for hunting and camping.  Animals from all over the world where everywhere, stuffed on display.  A gun library, full of antique firearms.  A fish aquarium with the biggest catfish I'd ever seen.  On the second floor there was a full buffet restaurant, where such items as buffalo and elk were offered as burgers and steaks.  There was an arcade shooting gallery.  We had a blast up there.  All this in addition to all the hunting, fishing, boating, camping, hiking, and general outdoor recreation gear and clothing you can imagine.  After that 2 hour diversion, we walked over to Walmart to do some resupply shopping.  Then we went over to Taco Bell to grab some take-out, before riding back to camp back in Port Clinton.  I slept really good tonight, in my hammock, next to the river.  A full belly gorged on town food, and tired out from another late night Frisbee session.  What a good day.

4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42

July 11

1200

Today we had a goal.  Ambitious by our standards.  18 miles to get to Port Clinton.  Thanks to our 'alarm clock', we got off to another great start.  The trail was pretty smooth and flat early on.  We took a quick water break at the Fort Dietrich Snyder Monument, then kept on truckin'.  The temperature is much cooler today, and the woods around us are really pretty, so we were making some good time.  We crossed another milestone this morning.  1200 miles from Springer!  Sweet.  Soon after, we stopped for lunch at Eagles Nest Shelter.  The shelter was 0.3 off the trail, but we needed water, so we definitely needed to stop there.  The water source was almost dry.  It took me about 15 minutes to fill up my water.  It was a laborious process, but I fill up 2.5 liters.  Springs drying up is starting to become the norm, and it's hard to plan out your water needs.  A few miles past the shelter, there was a steep section, that was particularly rocky.  But it was over quickly enough, and we were back up on a bit of a higher ridge line.  In the late afternoon, I came down off the ridge, down into Port Clinton, Pa.  The descent was extremely steep and rocky, and was tough on my knees after a long day.  The trail dumps you off at a rail yard.  An engineer was busy moving various train cars on and off different sections of the tracks.  I crossed over the tracks, where Slims and Apache were waiting, next to a huge chunk of coal that was on display.  Tink came down the mountain soon after, and we all walked down the road to 'The Pavilion'.  Right next to the river, the town here has a large field, and an open walled picnic pavilion that hikers are allowed to camp at for free.  A former hiker, and trail angel, "Can-Do, Will-Do", was posted up there helping out all of the hikers for a couple of weeks.  He had all kinds of snacks and drinks spread out for us, and would take us into the nearby town of Hamburg, all for free, just to help out.  Awesome!  After dark, we got several other hikers involved in an awesome Frisbee tossing session.  Tink had a multi-colored, lighted Frisbee, so we could see it in the dark.  Good times!

The Thinkers

July 10

Shower time

We got a good start out of camp this morning.  Tink and Slims woke Apache and I up.  They always manage to get up early, so they're acting as our alarm clock now.  Early on, we crossed over a really pretty iron bridge at Swarta Gap.  We had more nice hiking this morning and soon climbed back up onto another ridge line.  As we crossed under I-81, there was some trail magic left there by Sonic, a fellow hiker who is a couple days ahead of us now.  We stopped for lunch at William Penn shelter.  Since this morning, the heat hasn't let up at all.  Not in triple digits at least, but 90s and humid, day after day.  We got to the 501 shelter in the middle of the afternoon and stopped for a long break.  This is a really nice shelter.  More like a single room house.  Fully enclosed with four walls, bunks all around the sides, picnic table in the middle of the room under a big skylight.  There's also an outdoor shower.  Basically just a garden hose stuck through a hole in the shower stall wall, but nice to have on a hot day like this.  My shorts and socks are totally saturated with sweat, and they stink like nothing else.  So I washed the salt off of my body, and rinsed out my clothes in the shower.  Surprisingly, we didn't get sucked in to staying there, even though the accommodations would have been really nice.  We kept on hiking in the late afternoon, finally stopping at the Hertline campsite.  Good idea.  This was a really great spot.  Things had started to cool off in the evening a bit, and the water source here was really good.  We all set up camp in a grove of hemlock trees, right next to a massive boulder field.  We got a nice campfire going, and cooked dinner.  Before heading to bed, we fired off the last of the fireworks we had, right in the middle of the boulder field.

AT crossing an old iron bridge, built in 1890, at Swarta Gap, Pa.

July 9

Snakes!  Why'd it have to be snakes!

So much for getting up early.  With our hammocks, we both sleep so comfortably, and it's hard to wake up at dawn.  Still, we got a decent start out of camp, just not as early as we had hoped.  I was pretty low water from cooking dinner and drinking last night, and drinking more this morning.  I didn't fill up at the orange colored spring, and just took my chances.  The water sourced a few miles out at Rattling Run was completely dry.  Boo.  Just before the dry creek there, I just happened to glance off to the right of the trail where there was a little campsite someone had made.  Something looked out of place and caught my eye.  I yelled ahead to Apache.  There was a huge rattlesnake sunning itself there next to the fire ring.  It wasn't the longest snake I've seen on the trail, maybe 4 to 5 feet long, but it was the thickest.  The body of this rattler was a big around as my forearm.  We got our cameras out and started clicking away.  The snake noticed us, and passively slithered out into the woods, rattling its tail as a warning as it went.  My heart was pounding.  So cool!  First rattlesnake on the trail.  It's pretty terrifying to think, one of those guys could be right on the trail at any time.  Have to pay attention to where I'm stepping.  Especially with all the rocks here in Pennsylvania.  A little further up the trail, I found a good spring, and filled up there.  Apache and I stopped for a late lunch break at Rausch Gap shelter.  The old shelter has been torn down, and is currently under construction.  The local trail club is in the process of renovating the area, and rebuilding the shelter this year.  Still no sign of our friends, and since the shelter is in this state of repair, there's no register log for them to have left a note for us in.  Hmmm.  We kept hiking on into the afternoon.  Finally, around 5pm, we rolled into a campsite just before a road crossing that led to Lickdale, Pa.  Tink and Slims had been there waiting for us since about 2pm.  Apparently, yesterday, they had planned to stop just past where Apache and I had camped, but there was no water, so they kept hiking.  They ended up doing a 21 mile day to make it to a water source for the night.  We talked about hiking on, but since there was water at this spot, we decided to stay.  Besides, Apache and I had already done about 15 miles to get there.  That's a good enough day.  We set up camp, and then walked a short distance to the road.  Some other thru-hikers were camped there with us and watched our stuff as we hitched a ride into Lickdale.  The value menu and Wendy's was a much better dinner option.  We were craving Frostys too.  We did a little resupplying at the truck stop across the street and hitched back out to our campsite.  I packed out a couple liters of Powerade, and a huge iced tea.  In this heat, you can't get enough fluids.

Finally saw a rattlesnake!

July 8

Split up

Amber Alert had made it to the shelter with us yesterday, and she, Slims, and Tink were up at the crack of dawn.  They headed out hiking by about 7am, and no sooner than they had left, it started to rain.  Apache and I hadn't gotten out of our hammocks yet, and with the rain falling, we didn't move.  After the passing shower, we finally got up and moving.  Packed up, ate breakfast, and started hiking.  The rain had cooled things down significantly.  Well, it was probably still in the upper 80s or low 90s, but a huge improvement from yesterday!  We stopped for a lunch break at the next shelter, Peters Mountain.  We rationed our water though, since we didn't want to go down the 300 rock steps there to the 'unreliable' water source.  I caught Amber and hiked with her for bit, and with Apache for a bit.  She fell behind though, and I couldn't keep up with him, so I was hiking alone for much of the afternoon.  When I came down off the ridge, there was a parking lot at route 325, next to Clarks Creek.  Apache was already there taking a water break.  I filled up on my water, and dried out my hammock tarp in the sun.  We waited on Amber for a while, but never saw her again.  We hadn't caught up with Slims and Tink there either.  We had no idea how far ahead they were, but we figured that there was no way that they had gone all the way to Rausch Gap shelter.  That would have been a 25 mile day, and that's just not our style.  Well, we've done those kind of miles before, but surely they would have left a note for us if they were planning a big day like that.  It was well past 5pm and we were still about 11 miles from the shelter.  We thought that they must be just camping somewhere in between.  I carried 2 liters of water out from the creek, and headed back up the mountain.  After about 2 miles, I made it to a spring near the top of the climb.  A local had told us that the springs in the area coming up were probably dry, so that's why I had carried so much water from the creek.  I didn't need water here, and I was glad.  The water was clear, but it was running through an area that had been stained a rusty, orange color.  Probably from iron in the rocks.  It probably would have been okay to drink, but I was happy that I didn't have to find out.  Apache caught up with me there.  Still no sign of Tink and Slims.  I would be dark in about an hour, so we could keep going to try to find them.  We'd end up hiking in the dark though, and we had no idea if the upcoming water sources were still flowing.  So we decided it'd be best to just set up camp there for the night, cook some dinner, and get up early to try to catch them in the morning.

 Footbridge crossing PA Route 225 on the AT.

July 7

Too hot

We had a good breakfast in town at the local diner.  Hung out at the post office for a bit, sitting under a tree in the shade.  We walked across the bridge over the Susquehanna River and detoured to a Sheetz for lunch. It was 105*F today.  Unbearable.  After I chugged a ton of Gatorade at the store, I headed back out toward the trail.  We only made it 6 miles today, 2 of which was walking from one end of town to the other. So, only about 4 miles or so into the woods to the first shelter at Clarks Ferry.  I had carried out 2 liters of water from the store, and it was all but gone.  The spring at the shelter was ice cold though.  Dipping my bandanna in the water, I spent a while cooling off.  Bugs and heat, that about sums it up for today.  Not fun at all, but we had a good time at the shelter, chillin' and listening to music.

The famous Doyle Hotel, Duncannon, Pa.

July 6

The Doyle

Well, we hit the breakfast at the hotel again, and started out to the trail again.  The temperatures weren't any better today.  Just smothering heat.  Needless to say, we got a late start leaving the hotel.  Early this afternoon, I got to the Scott Farm Trail Center, where some of the "Billville" trail angels were set up doing some trail magic.  Baltimore Jack cooked me up a burrito.  I had some ice cold lemonade, chips, and a piece of cake too.  They said there's a bunch of their crew out doing trail magic today, and that they'd be in Duncannon all weekend for a hiker feed as well.  A bit further down the trail, there was another Billville outpost.  I passed on a second helping of burritos, but I did down several glasses of cold iced tea.  I stopped for a quick break at the Darlington shelter, where I caught back up with Slims and Apache.  Funny, this is where I thought I was going to be two nights ago.  Haha!  This shelter has an unusually large privy building, dubbed the "Taj Mahal Privy".  Weird.  Anyway, we kept on moving through the brutal heat, and came out into a field where a third outpost of trail magic was set up.  This time it was some of our fellow thru-hikers who were supplying the magic.  Snotrocket, Anchor, and Chef had already made it to Duncannon a few days ago and had helping out the Billville crew with their trail magic operations since then.  I got some more refreshing lemonade and iced tea and kept on pushing.  We got up onto a nice ridge line for a while, late in the afternoon.  Bumped into CV too, who I hadn't seen since Erwin.  She's now going by the name Amber Alert, as she has a tendency to disappear from time to time.  Pretty funny.  Somehow, I had gotten ahead of Apache and Slims.  That never happens.  They hike a little bit faster than me.  Amber Alert and I watched a nice sunset from Hawk Rock, overlooking the town of Duncannon, waiting on the guys to catch up.  There was just enough residual light left in the sky that I was able to make it down the steep decent into town with out my headlamp on.  Not sure what happened to Amber Alert.  True to her name, we didn't see her again that night, haha.  Slims, Apache, and I met Tink and Highking at the Doyle around 10pm, where we all planned to stay for the night.  Highking had gotten a room for us, and said that when he booked it, the guy there said the White Lightning (the first hiker to complete a thru hike this year, that we met back in Pine Grove Furnace a few days ago) had left a note with the manager there with our names on it and some cash to pay for our room.  Incredible!  More trail magic.  Super nice of him to do.  The Doyle is an old, historic hotel.  The rooms are very spartan.  No A/C.  Shared bathrooms.  The rooms just have a couple beds, a lamp, and a fan.  But the building has a ton of character.  It's a trail icon.  We made it out of the cornfields today, back up into the mountains, saw a great sunset, and made it to Duncannon.  17+ mile day.

Sunset at Hawk Rock, just south of Duncannon, Pa.

July 5

Roller Coasters!  (the fun kind)

Still awful hot out today.  Not good for the motivation to start out hiking again.  We hit up the breakfast at the hotel.  I knew we were close to Hershey, Pa., and after doing a little research on the computer, found out a way that we could go to Hershey Park!  Tink and Slims decided to zero, but just hung out at the hotel all day.  I called the local Enterprise, and had them pick up Apache, Highking, and I.  Then we drove off to Hershey Park, only 30 miles away.  The park was really nice.  Hershey Kiss shaped light posts.  We didn't go to the chocolate factory, we wanted to do rides.  We made a b-line for the roller coasters.  Their new ride, "SkyRush", was incredible.  You shot up the first hill, about 200 feet up or so, then had a vertical drop down the other side.  Yeah, we rode in the front seats.  We made sure to hit all of the coasters the park had to offer.  There was even a great water park that we had access too included with admission.  Late in the afternoon, Apache and I hung out for a good hour and a half there.  We rode all of the inner-tube water slides.  Then we went over to this massive water/jungle gym/fort like complex.  We were climbing in and out of the tunnels.  Spraying kids with the water cannons.  Sliding down the water slides.  Good times.  Perfect for cooling off on a hot day.  We finished up the park that evening, riding some of our favorite coasters again.  The three of us even took a nice, leisurely spin on the Ferris wheel, all lit up at night.  Great zero day.  I wish I had some good pictures, but I didn't bring my camera with me since I didn't want to lose it in the park.

Heading to Hershey Park for the day!

July 4

Happy Birthday America!

As we are accustomed to doing, we stayed in the room right until the last minute before checking out in the morning.  No real plan of how far to go today.  The area north of town is still in the 'no camping' zone.  The first shelter we could get to is 14 miles away.  It was still ridiculously hot outside today too.  We hung out at the ATC for a while.  Met a really nice local who drove me to a Best Buy so I could get a new mp3 player.  Nobody wanted to hike out in the afternoon heat, so we decided to wait until about 5:00 or so before we started moving.  We figured in this long, flat section, we could do a little night hiking.  Plus, we had some fireworks that we wanted to light off for celebration of the 4th.  The hike out of town was really fun.  We had tunes playing from my speakers, and moseyed along through woods and past corn fields.  We took a lot of breaks to snack, hydrate, and just goof-off.  At dusk, we walked through one section of the woods, where apparently we had startled a huge flock of birds or bats.  We couldn't see what it was, but there was a huge mass of some kind of winged creatures, making all sorts of noise, flapping above our heads.  Kinda creepy.  At one point, just after dark, we came out onto a road, and sat down on a grassy knoll over looking a huge field.  We stopped for a long break there.  We could see fireworks off in the distance from three different cities.  "oohhh, to the left", "oh, did you see the big one on the right?", "middle, middle!".  Pretty cool.  Once the finales were over, we got up and kept on hiking.  We made it to a pedestrian bridge that crossed Rt 11, going in to Carlisle, Pa., around 10pm.  We could see the glow of a Days Inn sign from where we stood.  There was still about 6 miles to go to get to the shelter.  Yeah, that wasn't happening.  This was a pretty clear spot, so we waited for no traffic to be going by, and lit off some of our fireworks.  Then we headed to the hotel to split a room.  Showers three nights in a row, man, I'm getting spoiled.

Cornfields at sunset on the AT.

 

July 3

Allenberry part duex

We had such a great time at the Allenberry last night.  Apache and I checked out, and walked back into town to the ATC office, where we met up with the rest of the crew.  We told them about the cheap rates, swimming, game room, etc. and convinced them to take a zero and stay up at the resort with us.  We didn't do much today.  Just hanging out.  Did some town chores.  Hit the post office.  All that good stuff.  Then we spent the night at the resort hanging out in the game room for most of the night.

July 2

1100

Had some bad news recently.  Our friend Rainbow Eyes got back on the trail a few days ago, starting out from Harpers Ferry, but he was back home again after injuring his ankle.  With his love for ice cream, the half-gallon challenge was just not the same, and now it will be a bit longer before he's back on the trail again.  Only thing we can do for now is keep on hiking north.  Passed another milestone early into the hike this morning.  1100 miles from Springer!  Around lunch time, we made it to a road crossing at PA route 34.  Two-tenths of a mile down the road was Green Mountain Store, where we all took care of our real food and beverage cravings.  I had an excellent chicken breast sub.  The selection of sodas were incredible, with many hard to find and/or unique choices.  I had a Frozen Run Birch Beer, locally made in PA, that was the best Birch Beer I've ever had.  The store there had a pretty good hiker resupply.  I would highly recommend this place to other hikers for a break and short resupply.  Pretty hot this afternoon.  Climbing through the 'rock maze' section was fun, and made the heat a bit less noticeable.  Got pretty low on water, so I stopped at Whiskey Spring Rd.  It was a nice stream, but since it was coming from a pipe that went under the road, I broke out my new Sawyer Squeeze filter for the first time and treated the water that way.  Late in the afternoon now, I was hiking with Apache, and we came down off the mountain ridge into rolling farmland.  The trail zig-zagged around several farmer's fields.  According to our guidebooks, there is no camping allowed in this area for a stretch of about 20 miles or so.  One option for hikers is the 'backpacker's campsite' just south of town near Boiling Springs.  We passed that by.  The town pool looked so inviting.  Getting out of the heat is thought number one.  The town of Boiling Springs was beautiful.  The trail went right through town, past a large spring-fed pond full of ducks and swans.  The water was nice and cool.  We debated taking a dip, but we figured that behavior might be frowned upon.  Instead we stopped for a break on the porch of the ATC Mid-Atlantic Regional Office.  It was closed for the day, but we got water from the faucet, checked out the hiker box, looked at the register, and relaxed.  Apache and I talked about walking a mile down the road to a resort that had a great hiker rate.  Our other friends stayed back at the backpacker site.  Another hiker we had just met a couple days ago, Kazoo, wanted to come with us, so we all walked down the highway to the Allenberry.  This place is a resort destination, who's clientele is usually of the fly-fishing scene that is tremendously popular in the area.  They have a playhouse on the grounds as well.  We didn't catch a show, but it would have been fun too.  They offer a really cheap rate for hikers.  We checked in to our room, hit the pool and hot tub for a bit, then went downstairs to the 'lounge'.  Things were a little dated, but there was foozball, air hockey, billiards, pingpong, a computer with internet access, and an entertainment center.  We googled the closet pizza joint, and got Pizza Hut to deliver to the hotel.  Then we stayed up late watching Jurassic Park on VHS.  It was awesome.  The theme music from the movie had been running through our heads for a lot of this trip, so watching it took care of that fix for us.  Excellent destination for hikers.  I would strongly recommend for anyone passing though Boiling Springs.  We wanted to move in.  Maybe get a job there.  Haha!

On the trail through beautiful Boiling Springs, Pa.

July 1

"Oh, oh, we're half way there....whoa oh, livin' on a prayer"

Got a decent start this morning.  Out of bed, packed up, and hiking by 8:30.  Well, decent by our standards at least.  Nice easy hiking.  A little bit hotter today though.  Crossed several gravel roads.  At one, there was a sign as you got back into the woods on the AT, "No Snowmobiles".  Kind of funny.  Just after a PATC (Potomac Appalachian Trail Club) cabin, there was a really pretty section with pine trees all around.  Starting to see some rhododendrons in places too.  I've been missing my evergreens.  We made it in to Birch Run shelters for and early lunch by 11:15am.  More easy hiking.  Everyone else got ahead of me, so I was hiking alone for most of the afternoon.  Taking my time, and enjoying things, I stopped to pick some delicious blueberries on the trail.  I caught up with everyone at the Toms Run shelters.  In looking at the guidebook, 0.1 miles back was the statistical halfway point of the trail this year.  I went back to this little footbridge that crossed a stream, and wrote in pebbles "GA 1092 >" for the southbounders, and "ME 1092 >" for the northbounders.  We all hiked out together and made it to Pine Grove Furnace State Park.  We took a break at the general store.  We've been waiting a long time for this break.  This is were thru hikers partake in the "half-gallon challenge".  The store had Bryer's.  Yum.  I strategically chose the mixed variety of strawberry/chocolate/vanilla.  I figured that way I wouldn't get sick of any one flavor.  It was a good choice. I finished off my box of ice cream first, in under 20 minutes.  Still hungry, I went back inside and ordered a cheeseburger and a Coke for dessert.  Haha.  I am now the proud owner of a little wooden spoon that reads - "half gallon club".  Another cool thing about our break there, was getting to meet "White Lightning".  He is a 2012 thru hiker, with the distinction of being the first one to finish a NoBo hike this year.  He started in February, and finished about 3 months later on May 26.  Crazy.  Awesome.  Totally stuffed we hiked on.  Camping is not allowed in the park, so we walked out, past the lake.  We crossed a gravel road that delineated the park boundary, and made camp about 30 yards outside of the park.  19 mile day.  Half way done with the AT.  From this point on, Springer will be farther away than Katahdin.  Bittersweet.

Half way there!

June 30

Another great day

Mostly downhill this morning.  The sun is shining, and the rain last night cooled things off considerably.  Guessing it's only in the high 80s now.  This is doable now.  Got some trail magic from a local family at Antietam shelter.  Cold soda.  Yum!  A short way farther, we stopped at Tumbling Run shelters for a water break.  This was another dual shelter configuration.  The maintainer here must have a great sense of humor.  There was a sign on one shelter that said "snoring", and the other shelter had one saying "non-snoring".  Haha.  Nice cooking pavilion too.  Had a 'big' 900 foot climb out of there, up to Chimney Rocks.  We stopped to enjoy more great views.  A Boy Scout troop was up there taking a lunch break and gave us all apples.  Awesome!  We're actually gaining some elevation, bouncing around near 2000 feet for the first part of the afternoon.  Temperatures still nice and relatively cool.  We stopped for lunch, right on the trail, near Rocky Mountain shelters.  The sky started getting dark.  We took off hiking again.  I had my pack cover on, but it never really opened up into a full on rain.  Our group got kind of split up, and I ended up hiking alone for a while.  The woods were dark.  At one point, I paused, turned around, and noticed a white blaze on a tree.  It's funny, at that moment I got this feeling, goosebumps.  Standing in the dark, green, forest in PA.  Looking southbound down the trail, and thinking about how far in that direction it was to where I started in Georgia.  It had a feeling of being a real thru hiker.  It's kind of hard to describe.  I'm guessing like how a pro athlete must feel.  As a kid, dreaming about playing in the NBA.  Holding a balled up pair of socks.  Counting down, "Three", "Two", "One", and tossing them in the hamper.  Swish.  The buzzer goes off.  The crowd goes wild.  Then years later, making it into the league.  Being on the court.  Making that last second shot to win the game.  Living that dream you had dreamed about for so long.  It was like that for me.  All the videos I watched.  The books I read.  The photos of other people's thru hikes.  All the hours of research.  All the gear purchases.  All the day hikes.  Now that hiker was me.  An incredible feeling.  I met everyone at Caledonia State Park.  Nice place.  Hiking trails, picnic areas, pool.  We hit up the snack bar for some sodas, burgers, and fries.  Since there was a fee to use the pool, we went back to the AT, to a swimming hole just outside the park.  Highking, Apache, and I got our clean on, scrubbing down with our Dr Bronners soap to get the dirt and salt off our bodies.  The water was cold and refreshing.  The rain clouds were nowhere in sight.  After taking a leisurely afternoon break at the swimming hole, we hiked on a few miles, leaving the park.  We made it to Quarry Gap shelters.  This is hands down the most amazing shelter on the trail so far.  The maintainer, or "Innkeeper", here has really outdone himself.  A happy picket fence and hanging potted flowers greet you as you enter the shelter area.  Then there's a nice bench to sit on, next to the spring.  Nice tent platforms.  Then the shelter itself.  Two separate sleeping areas, that each hold 3 or 4 hikers, with a covered porch connecting them.  A picnic table underneath the porch roof.  Lots of cozy details, like lanterns, carved wooded yellow rubber duckies on the walls, more hanging plants.  Amazing.  A chess board.  A shelter log, and a separate notebook specifically for 'doodling'.  Haha.  This place looks more like a hostel.  A nice hostel at that.  Knocked out a decent 15 miles today, took a lot of breaks, and had a blast doing it.

Quarry Gap shelter

June 29

Leaving the South behind

We had an easy morning.  A few bumps, but mostly downhill, to Pen-Mar park.  We stopped here to take a break.  It was early, but already steamy hot.  Got a soda at the vending machine.  Soon after leaving the park, we crossed some rail road tracks.  Immediately after, there was a sign in the woods.  "Mason-Dixon Line".  We were officially out of the South, and into the seventh state of this hike, Pennsylvania!  1058.2 miles from Springer.  Only (haha, only) 1126 miles from Katahdin.  We snapped some photos, then hiked a few tenths farther to Pen Mar Road, and hitched in to Waynesboro, Pa to resupply.  There was a Chinese buffet in the WalMart shopping center, so of course we hit that up.  We went shopping for hiker food in WalMart, and sat in the lobby for hours, charging our cell phones and cameras, and staying out of the heat.  The temperature was a miserable 102*F.  Dreading hiking in this heat and humidity, we waited, and waited before heading out back toward the trail.  We got a quick hitch back up to the trail and hiked on in the evening.  The elevation isn't very high, only 1300 feet or so, but once we were in the woods, there was a noticeable cooling in the temperature.  Probably still in the mid-90s, but cooler than in town.  We only made it a few miles, to Deer Lick shelters, to stop for the night.  This site actually had 2 separate shelters, each sleeping about 5.  Pretty cool.  For dinner, we had some nice ears of corn that I had bought at WalMart, cooked over the fire.  After dinner, we drank some Birch Beer soda.  I love this stuff, and I had packed out a heavy 2-liter bottle.  Chilled it in the spring.  Totally worth it.  As nightfall came, we started to hear thunder.  I packed up my hammock and set up in one of the shelters.  Good call.  It rained all night.  I woke up a lot during the night.  In part due to the strobe flashes of lightning that illuminated our camp, and also because of the quantity of soda I drank right before bed.

Orion and Slims, excited to finally be in the 'North'.

June 28

Rave

Ugh.  Not a great start this morning.  Getting the motivation to hike is hard.  I've heard of the Virginia blues, but I seem to have a case of the Maryland blues.  It's got to be the heat.  We had some nice views up at Annapolis rocks, only a mile into the hike today.  Seemed like it took forever to get there though.  More good views at Black Rock cliffs.  Stopped at the Pogo Memorial campsite, and filled up on some much needed, cold spring water there.  Pretty easy hiking the rest of the afternoon, along a long ridge for about 5 miles or so.  Just before the trail headed down off of the ridge, there was a brief, steep, rocky section.  Just up the trail, I heard a loud crash of rocks banging together.  I looked up and saw a large black animal walking along the rocky ridge.  I finally saw my first bear of this hike!  Not in Georgia, with it's ninja, food stealing bears.  Not in the Smokies.  Not even in Shenandoah.  In Maryland of all places.  LOL.  In the evening, we made it to Raven Rock shelter.  This was a brand new shelter, and to say it was nice would be a gross understatement.  Two stories.  The place still smelled like wood.  The floor was freshly lacquered.  It was so glossy, it looked like you could go bowling on it.  Even the privy was nice.  Packages off wood chips, clearly store-bought, for you to 'flush' with.  Nice.  There were only a couple other thru hikers there, and a large group of section hikers that were tenting away from the shelter.  I unpacked my stuff to start setting up for the night.  The disco ball became a conversation piece.  Well, every one seemed down with the idea, and this being such a great shelter, we decided to throw the first ever disco party here.  At dusk, I used my bear bag line to rig up the motor from one of the roof beams inside the shelter.  Attached the 8" mirror ball.  Others strategically placed their headlamps, focusing the beams on the mirrors.  One headlamp was put on flash mode to act as a strobe light.  Tink whipped out some glow sticks she had been carrying.  I hooked up her Ipod to my speakers.  Turned on some Daft Punk.  And we all partied like it was 1999.  Slims, Tink, and I danced in the upper level.  Unfortunately, I think the speakers had gotten turned on in my pack somehow, and they were drained after only a couple of songs.  Oh well.  For how long it lasted, we had a blast.  And now we know that the disco party can be a success.  Some of the others were skeptical at first, but it was great to hear that they thought the disco party was awesome.  I wrote in the shelter log about our party, and noted that this shelter should now no longer be know as Raven Rock, but rather Ravin' Rock.  Epic!  I'd been talking about doing this for so long, and carried this thing for over 100 miles.  Now I can officially don my other trail name, known only among our inner circle, the "DiscoBear".

Getting set up for the disco party at "Ravin' Rock" shelter

June 27

Getting my learn on

After yesterday's average-type hike of about 14 miles or so, today sure was different.  We didn't make it very far.  A laughable 5.7 miles to Pine Knob shelter.  The hiking was great.  It was ungodly hot, so that had a lot to do with it.  We took several long breaks throughout the day for water and rest.  We had a lot of fun too though.  First up was Washington Monument State Park.  We went into the museum there and saw all kinds of amazing artifacts from the Civil War.  The Park Service staff there was extremely knowledgeable and I really enjoyed the information that he gave us.  I knew going into this hike that the section around WVa and Maryland would put us really close to Civil War battlefields.  But I was taken aback to learn that some of the same gaps that we had just walked through in the last day or two, were the bloody battle sites, were in some instances, over 6000 people had died.  Absolutely staggering.  Like, oh, by the way that shelter back there in such and such gap, yeh, that's were thousands of people died 150 years ago.  Wow.  If there's anywhere on the trail that you're going to have an encounter with the supernatural, this would be it.  Totally surrounded by history.  Ugly history, but history nonetheless.  We hiked up to the monument, built in the 1800s by local towns people, to honor George Washington.  Nice views from the top of the stone tower.  The rest of the afternoon, we got distracted on numerous occasions to pick wild fruit.  Cherries, blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries.  Yum!  We came out of the woods briefly into a residential area, and crossed a fenced in footbridge that went over I-70.  It kind of looked like the pterodactyl cage from that Jurassic Park movie (JP3 I think).  Anyway.  We got lots of waves from cars going under us, and even a honk from a trucker.  Awesome.  We pulled in to Pine Knob around 3:30 or so, planning to just take a break, but we ended up calling it a day.  We set up camp in the woods away from the shelter, started a fire, and cooked dinner.  Late in the evening, Tink and Highking pulled in, so that was cool that they caught back up.  Apparently, they had gotten tied up in Harper's even longer than we had, and had been trying to catch us over the past few days.

"Hell is empty and all the devils are here" - quite the description of battle.  Wow.

  

June 26

Beef, it's what's for dinner

After getting to sleep so late last night, we all slept in this morning.  Started the morning off with a climb, up to Weaverton Cliffs, where we were treated to plenty of sunshine and outstanding views of the river valley.  We took a snack break at the Ed Garvey shelter.  Amazing 2-story shelter.  It was sunny, cooler, and breezy as we entered Gathland State Park.  We walked around the grounds to check out the historical exhibits there.  I stopped at the soda machine there and pushed the button for a cherry Coke.  Instead a Sprite came out.  I was thirsty, and jonesin' for a Coke so bad.  No caffeine in a sprite either.  $1.75 wasted.  Man, this is a hiker tragedy.  There was an 800 number on the vending machine, so yep, I called it.  The wonderful lady on the line is going to mail me 2 coupons for free coke.  Awesome!  Love Coke.  Anyway, we hiked on the rest of the afternoon, and stopped at the Dahlgren backpacker campground.  It's basically just a grassy clearing in the woods, with tenting areas, grills, a bear pole, and a shower/bath house.  Simple, but nice to have.  It was pretty crowded with several large groups of section hikers.  We saw in our guidebook that there was a road crossing an a restaurant just 0.3 north, so we walked up for dinner.  The Old South Mountain Inn was established in the 1700's.  We were extremely undressed to be eating there.  The hostess seemed a little put off by us coming in.  I thought it was pretty odd that the guidebook listed this place for hikers.  I guess if you were just doing a short hike, and were doing the sort of B&B thing, and could get cleaned up, and could afford it, it'd be a nice treat.  We got seated and considered leaving when we read the menu.  Nothing under $20.  Entrees like scallops, quail, veal, lobster.  The wine list included bottles in the $100 range like Cakebread, Staggs Leap, and Vueve Cliquot.  All familiar to me from my food/bev background, and sadly way out of my hiker budget price range.  We stayed for dinner, considering it to be a treat.  After all, we had walked 1034 miles to get here.  We deserved it.  Some of the other diners there came up to us to ask us about our hikes.  The prime rib was on special tonight, under $20, so we all got that.  I splurged and also got a glass of the house pinot noir with my dinner. The meal was A-maze-ing.  A perfectly cooked, medium slab of beef.  Delicious roasted veggies.  Baked potato with butter and sour cream.  Fat and happy is how I went to sleep tonight.

View at Weaverton Cliffs