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.