I planned to meet my wife, Terrie, on 5/30 for about five days of off the trail fun at Palmerton, PA. She wanted to hike so I tried to find a place where the terrain would not to be too rough. She is a gym rat and not hiker trash. I figured I needed to slow down for a few days.
I left the Clarks Ferry Shelter with Momentum on a nice clear morning. It was a nice smooth path for a about five miles and then it became boulder rocky and we stopped for lunch at a pretty view.
The sharp rocks were hurting my feet and after lunch Momentum left me behind easily. But I met up with her later, being about 25 minutes behind she said, at PA 325, where there was a nice big stream, Clarks Creek, and I dunked my swollen feet into the cold water. We had walked about 14 miles so far.
Momentum went ahead because she wanted to get the big 1000 foot hill over with.
It wasn't supposed to rain that day, but the weather app is correct about 50% of the time I have come to realize, and it began to thunder and pour as I was about halfway up.
Soon, I was soaked but it actually felt good after the long hot day.
When I came to the top of the hill, there were some nice tenting areas and I thought to park there. Then I noticed a thin girl in a blue rain suit sitting on a rock and smoking a cigarette.
She told me her name was Hooks, that she was twenty years old, and she had been walking the trail for about a month and had another week to go before she ran out of money.
Now, she couldn't decide whether to camp here or go. I told her that I had the same problem and so I suggested we walk a little further.
We walked together about 3 miles and I learned that Hooks got the name Hooks because she enjoys hooking up her skin and hanging from the hooks for a period of time. She showed me the scars on her arm.
Sounds like fun I said.
I thought it was strange at first, she said, but I decided to try it and I like it. I do it every few months or so. It feels very relieving. It helps relieve stress. It's like meditation.
Is it painful, I asked.
It is at first. But not if you relax into it. After you have done it you feel very good.
We walked about 3 more miles and we were both tired and settled for a little clearing alongside the trail near Rattling Run. While setting up my tent, one of the tension poles cracked and I had to duck tape it in order to keep my tent up.
I needed to call REI. REI has the best return policy in the hiking/camping world. But it could be a few days before I could get phone service.
I would have to sleep in shelters if this pole didn't hold.
I know Hooks wanted to stay up and talk but I was tired after a 17 mile day, and crawled into my bag around five o'clock.
June 22 Pine Grove Pa. 1193 miles
This was my longest day up to now. A 25 mile day.
I had had a good long sleep and the day broke clear and ground was not too wet.
At Yellow Springs, a little clearing alongside the trail, Hooks and I saw a deer eating grass. It turned and looked at me and then went back to eating grass. Wow. That deer is confident I said to Hooks.
Later I learned that a deer had torn into Amazon's tent and had almost come up to her to lick the salt from her skin. That is domesticated.
It was nice relatively smooth path for Pennsylvania and I was feeling wonderful. At about 8 miles into the hike, as we were going up a hill, Hooks said she needed a break and a cigarette. I didn't and realized I was in better shape than she and so left her.
About 5 miles later, I came to a road crossing Swatara Gap where Amazon and her gang of about eight hikers were getting trail magic from Amazon's mother. I took some water and some apples and thanked Momazon and headed out. I was still feeling good and knew that I had a small hill to climb. The goal was William Penn Shelter which was 8 miles away.
Around noon, after crossing some pretty fields, I had lunch under an overpass where 54 year old Avalanche in his Scottish kilt was eating his lunch on a bench. Strange to see a bench under an overpass but someone was thinking of hikers and it was welcome.
Then it was a rocky climb up and over large suitcase size rocks and then 3 miles over smooth trail through the woods and ferns as far as the eye could see. The nats had come out and enjoyed hanging on my eyelashes for miles, and I found that my sweaty washrag made a good flyswatter.
After walking 21 miles I ran into Momentum at Weilliam Penn Shelter. She was surprised I wanted to go on but I thought that I was just four miles away from a town hitchhike so I pressed on.
Avalanche had mentioned there was trail magic at the 501 Shelter and indeed there was. I drank some Gatorade and ate some oranges and the nice folks even took me into Pine Grove, Pa. and the Comfort Inn near where they were staying. They had come six hours from Ohio to give hikers some food and were going back tomorrow.
Love these guys.
June 23 Pine Grove, Pa. Comfort Inn 1193 miles
I decided to take a zero at the Inn and write some (I was weeks behind) but frustratingly, the Comfort Inn had a computer that only caught the Internet periodically.
I am so surprised the Internet is not working good said the hotel manager.
You work here. I'm sure you are totally shocked, I thought.
So I showered a few times, took a couple of naps and resupplied.
I did get some writing done however, and there was a Dollar General nearby where I resupplied with some tuna and some honeybuns and a McDonalds where I packed out 7 McDoubles.
June 24 Eagles Nest Shelter 1208 miles
I paid for a shuttle back to the trail about noon after trying to navigate the Internet all morning.
At the start of the trail a local hiker told me I could take a gravel road later and skip the rocky AT. I thanked him and took off.
It was a really rocky Pa. trail but I was getting into a rhythm of rock, step, rock, ground, step rock, rock. Trying to avoid the pointy rocks but land on the more flat ones. Miles of landing on pointy rocks is a killer on the bottoms of the feet.
Then I came to a part of the trail that was fooded like a swamp and had to navigate through the meadow jumping over fern drenched rivulets.
Then another fall. After about nine miles I tripped over a root and fell down on my side hitting rocks and leaving a nice big bruise near my hip and a red welt of a stigmata on my palm. Great. I just sat there for ten minutes breathing and resting. Enough is enough.
A mile later, I ran into a tent of trail magic with loads of snacks and drinks and hot dogs. This was a group from the psychology dept from the local Pa. college. They were doing research on the positives of hiking the AT and handing out surveys.
After my fall, the positives of the AT was too ironical.
I was tired and hurt and refused to do the survey but I told them that the Trail was like a marriage (where I got this from I have no clue): it starts off ecstatically and happily and then reality hits and it becomes challenging and then later one has to decide if they want to continue the marriage or move on.
Moreover, the trail has its positives but it has its challenges too and the Trail at the beginning is a different animal than in the middle of it, where I was, and where over 60% of the people I started with had gotten a divorce from the AT.
I should have recorded that the happy researcher said.
I think you should get serious about your job I thought, instead of taking a University paid leave to do trail magic and doing stupid research on a stupid idea with just a stupid survey.
I was a little grumpy and my stigmata was aching.
But one lady saw that I couldn't open a coke bottle with my sore hand and plied me with Little Debbies and oranges before I left.
She must have not been a psychologist.
I decided to take the gravel road that ran alongside the AT that the local hiker had suggested hours ago.
It turned out to be a wonderful hike: I saw three deer jump across the road ahead of me and many different species of birds flitting across the road. In the dark of the woods of the AT it is hard to see such things much of the time.
When I got to where the AT crossed the road, I walked a mile or so to the next shelter.
Googling, I later learned that the gravel road I had walked used to be called the AT and deduced that the State had taken it over and pushed the trail more into the woods. The Pa. Game Commission now used the old AT for snowmobiles and hunters.
I began to understand why trail-founder Benton MacKaye was so adamant about keeping the State and roads and highways away from the AT. I began to feel that I was missing out on some nice things as a result of the trail compromises that had been made years ago with the State.
When I got to the shelter Hooks and Momentum were set up with about thirty other local campers from Port Clinton and Philly. I managed to set up my broken tent and fell asleep to the sound of loud music and teenagers gabbing away into the night.
June 25 Eckville Shelter PA 1232 Miles
Talked to Terrie and we changed the date and are to meet up on the 29th, Thursday night. I will Uber to the resort from Palmerton and meet her there. She didn't like the place I found in AWOL, a cabin with shared bathroom. Not this girl! she said. I'm on vacation.
So she booked the Bear Creek Mtn. Resort. A Ski Resort. Fancy-shmancy place with all the amenities. More than fine by me.
I left Eagles Nest at 7:15 and instead of turning left onto the trail I turned right and walked to the gravel road that I had walked the day before. I must have walked about six miles and though no animals, I some nice pastures that I wouldn't have seen from the woods.
I looked at Guthook, my AT app, and found where the AT crossed the gravel road and got back on the trail.
After seven miles I dropped down into Port Clinton. My plan was to sleep at a Pavilion outside of town for a couple of days so that I could be in Palmerton on time.
Port Clinton is a very small passed-by looking town alongside a busy highway. It is a trail town however. The AT crossed a number of rusty railroad tracks and across a bridge and along the way there were huge blocks of carbon in the grass illustrating why the town is or was illustrious.
I went to the Port Clinton Hotel, the only hotel in Port Clinton for the renowned covered french fries and they were an enormous amount that almost filled me up. Talked to a bunch of guys at the bar about the AT. The guy next to me gave me half his to go philly steak (I'm a hiker so who I to refuse food?)
I visited the other Port Clinton site, the Peanut Shop, which is a candy store, and bought some chocolate and then went to the Pavillion, a large umbrellaed picnic shelter with tables and benches. I lay out my air mattress and sleeping bag and took an hour nap listening to the busy highway next door. through the trees.
I had planned on staying there a couple of days. But the traffic and a guy calling himself Preacher walking around greeting hikers was annoying and so I got me up, packed my gear, and headed down through town toward the trail.
I stopped at a Church that was giving out inexpensive food and met a guy in a truck hanging around and asked him if he would take me to Hawk Mountain Road. On my Google Maps I noted the road takes me up to the AT and passes through a wildlife sanctuary. I would still be walking almost the same number of miles as on the AT and perhaps see some interesting sights.
The guy agreed to do it for five bucks which is all the cash I had. He dropped me off at the bottom of the road and I began walking straight up the hill road: cars and motorcycles passing by every so often.
About an hour and two miles up, I saw my first Bear. It came out of the woods and onto the street about 75 yards up, and then turned and started walking uphill on the yellow line.
My phone was dead so I couldn't get a pic, and I didn't want some driver to round a curve and hit the guy, so I shouted, "hey Bear, hey Bear, hey!" and the bear turned its head around as if to say "now what do you want, can't you see I'm walking a yellow line?" and then he took off into the woods.
Along the way I saw a couple of falcons and a couple of hawks. Very cool.
After a few more hours of walking I reached the top and the official gated Sanctuary, and began walking downhill a few miles to the AT Eckhart Shelter which was, unusually, off this paved road. It was also different in that it had a flush toilet in the privy. Fancy dancy.
While there I saw very tall cello-player Amazon, with her long curly hair down her back, leading her pack of six or seven guys to a tent site nearby. They are part of the ten by ten idea, which is walking ten miles by ten AM. That's not me.
I'm more like a part of the six miles by ten group.
I took a platform in the shelter and planned to leave early the next morning and continue walking on this paved road and down into the countryside and then back up to the AT.
June 26 Bake Oven Knob Shelter 1249 miles
Left at six-thirty AM and Avalanche was fixing coffee and Amazon was presiding around a table off in the field with the boys as if they were conducting The First Breakfast.
The sun rose over Mountain Road as I checked my GPS and began walking in the flat rolling Pennsylvania Dutch countryside. I passed fields of grain and corn and cows gazing at me as if I was some alien from another planet, guarding their calves and mooing at me.
I passed old nineteenth century built farms and small lumber shops sitting right next to the streets. I could imagine wagons and horses passing their neighbors on this road over a hundred years ago.
Crossing a pond, I heard a hundred a voiced chorus of bull frogs creating a symphony of music. I recorded that for posterity and then a few miles down the road I turned off on a small street toward the hills in the distance and toward the Appalachian Trail.
After a few hundred yards, I saw a heavyset man sitting on a deck in a small country house a few yards away. I said Good Morning and he said "Are you a hiker?" And I said I was a Thru-hiker and he invited me up to have "breakfast cake."
Sure I said and walked over and unloaded my pack and then two middle-age daughters and the German-American mother came out and we had a nice meal of apple cake and berry tarts and nice fresh coffee out of a blue pot.
After forty-five minutes of pleasant conversation, I headed back up the road and toward the AT, arriving two hours later and dipping into the Green Tunnel once again.
The mosquitoes and nats were out when I arrived at the shelter. I was the only one there and the shelter was an old dirty one. I cleaned it out as much as I could and went to bed.
I woke up around twelve and heard some scratching in the corner of the shelter. I turned on my headlight and spotted a mouse on my food sack hanging in the corner
I moved the sack and hung it in front of the shelter.
Then about two o'clock I woke up and turned on the headlight and saw a mouse, its little beady eyes and nervous little hands, staring into the blinding light.
After a number of seconds it scampered out of the shelter and as I settled back into my sack I had to smile: that little guy was so nervous it would not return that night: it had seen the blinding light of the "Mouse-God."
June 27 Palmerton Pa/ Bert's Restaurant 1257 miles
I walked a nice mix of smooth and very large rocked trail into town: seven miles. And around noon I got a bunkbed in the room behind Bert's Restaurant. The owner had turned her office into a hiker TV room and a two bunk room. She also took the oily-smelling garage and put beds in it as well. The city council didn't like the idea but she, being the nice lady that she was, ignored them.
I settled in on some strawberry milkshakes and a burger and informed the PO that I was looking for my tent and shoes. The REI tent had arrived! I was tired. I'd pick it up tomorrow.
Little Bad Ass and BAM, Bad Ass' Mom, were bunking with me. Good to see them. Like me they were getting off the trail for a number of days. They had a funeral to attend to and I, on the other hand, had cocktails by the pool to be attended to. Yeah!
June 28 Palmerton Pa Bert's 1257 miles
My shoes were coming in next week. Bummer. I had put my hiking shoes, the Altras, in the dryer and shrunk the insoles so they didn't fit well. Oh well, I walked to the PO and got my new tent and sent back the broken one.
Palmerton is a charming town with little businesses sprouting like flowers everywhere: Walmart had not destroyed the village and the town council would not allow the monster to stalk its land.
That night I had Banana Foster ice cream with thirty or so other folks watching a family movie on the screen on the outside porch. I had a slice of pizza from the Salvadorian owners next door and then went and watched the local orchestra play John Phillip Souza 4th of July marching music at the little pavilion. Very nice.
Tomorrow I see my wife, Terrie, and will be whisked off to La La Land! Yeah!
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