What's in a Name

Our first day out of Boiling Springs was a big 15-mile hike to the next water source at Darlington Shelter. It seemed that it should have been an “easy” hike as the terrain was fairly flat crossing through agricultural lands and pastures on earthen trail until the final mile uphill. However, I think I have realized the with the added weight of a fully loaded pack, 15 miles is still 15 miles of foot pounding, so even though we made really good time, I was exhausted for the final stretch. This stretch of trail took us across many roads, a couple of highways, and a cow pasture where the cows got a little too close for comfort—being that close to an animal that big scares me.

The biggest danger on the trail, they say, is Lyme disease because the tick populations are so out of control. To prepare for this, we sprayed our gear and clothing with permethrin, Lily takes ingestible tick prevention, and we check Lily and ourselves regularly for ticks. We have started finding them on Lily (mostly on her feet and legs), so we are becoming super diligent.

The next morning we headed for Cove Mountain. It was a pretty hard 7 miles to get there followed by a steep decent to the shelter, and an even steeper decent to the water source. After soaking our aching feet in the icy stream and filling our water bottles, we searched for a place to set up the tent. Unfortunately, there was no place even close to level enough. There was a few young boy scouts in the shelter whose leaders welcomed us to share the shelter. But, last week we had a youth group set up all around our tent site, and between the late night giggling and midnight escapades, we didn’t get much rest. So we decided to push on an additional 4 miles to the town of Duncannon, bumping our mileage up to double digits.

Before the horrendous rocky decline into Duncannon, we were treated to the most spectacular view of our journey so far from the top of Hawk Rock. We stayed at the Doyle, a beautiful old building built as a Anheuser Busch Hotel over 100 years ago, currently an iconic hiker hotel in a sad state of disrepair. Even though we hear some negative comments about The Doyle on the trail because of its condition and the shared hallway bathroom, the room was warm and dry and the shower water was hot and their food was excellent—all this a step above a shelter or tent in spite of the mattress spring that made my leg look like I had fight with a cat. We particularly enjoyed the owners, Vickie (a true southerner) and Pat (the Yankee hippie who stole her heart), who are great entertaining characters!

View from Hawk Rock

Leaving the Doyle for Peter’s Mountain was our third double-digit day in a row and my most challenging day thus far. Not because of the mileage, but because of the rain, rain, rain. Mentally, being cold and wet for hours and hours made the physical challenges more difficult, and I was ready to give up. What kept me going? Well on the way out of Duncannon we stopped at a convenience store for a nutritious breakfast of honeybuns and cans of Starbucks espresso where the wise young man behind the counter (now my personal guru), said to me as I was leaving, “…and be sure that the weather will always be changing.”

Instead of pitching a tent in the rain, we opted to stay in the shelter with: Just Jason a young section hiker, Good Samaritan a through-hiker who started in Georgia, Ricochet an older hiker who hiked the first half of the AT last year and is finishing this year, and Cookie Monster an older woman hiking the flip-flop alone. As usual, everyone had left for his or her hikes by the time we got up and around. We didn’t get started on our hike until after 1:00 which gave time for the sun to help dry out all our clothes and luxuriously lounging about—the weather had changed.

The next shelter spot was too many miles away for me, and given our late start, we planned a short hike to a stealth camp (unofficial AT campsites along the trail). I lead the way towards mile 1166.4. At least that’s what I thought until we had hiked about a mile and I saw a signpost for Table Rock and realized that we were hiking in the wrong direction! Red Rudder, Red Rudder, Red Rudder…where was my navigator when I needed him? I said we would have to change his trail name if this happened again, but he insisted that he was testing me—giving me my wings to fly, and it was I that failed the test! So, we turned around and eventually made it to a very nice and most remote camp spot of our journey. Adding insult to injury, the first time past Table Rock we didn’t walk out to see the view because of the rain and clouds. Now it was sunny and clear, but we were well on our way back down the trail before I thought that we should have checked out the view since we were there again.

Our next hike to Rausch Gap was another hard double-digit day starting with a steep uphill. With the exception of crossing a beautiful fishing stream, the trail terrain was the least impressive so far—could it be we are just tired? After the day walking in the rain with mud and dirty water up to my ankles, I promised myself that I wouldn’t complain about the Pennsylvania rocks anymore, no matter how sharp, because at least rocks aren’t mud. They are satisfying islands for keeping the feet clean and dry. However, this day was exceptionally rocky, and my feet were particularly painful after miles of pounding. Trying to keep my promise, I found myself searching out muddy spots between the rocks large enough for a footfall just to feel something flat and soft under my feet. I would imagine how cool and soft the mud would feel gushing up between my toes… Rauch Gap had plenty of nice, unimproved space for tenting, but we were the only ones there. It felt a bit strange as there were helicopters flying overhead well into the dark of night. We wondered if something was going on, but figured there must be a military training base nearby.

We ran into Kansas this morning, another flip-flop through-hiker we thought had pulled far ahead of us. It boosted my confidence to see him and know that I’m not so far off from the speed and mileage of the average hiker. From Rausch Gap we hiked and shared another stealth campsite with a new companion Uncle Virge, a section hiker. It was a steep climb to this dry site where we had to carry additional water in order to be able to eat. Lesson learned here: water is heavy/have a dinner option that does not require hydration.

Our last day on this section was another double-digit day. It was relatively flat walking along the ridge in cool temperatures, but the rocky terrain makes it a difficult hike nonetheless. While waiting for our shuttle driver to pick us up and take us to our car, we hung out at the 501 shelter with: Crawdaddy and Tag Along (section hikers), Sasquatch (hiker from the UK hiking for 3 months), and Boondocker (a flip-flopper we met at Boiling Springs).

Now after a total of 181.7 miles on the trail, I’m resting my swollen, bruised feet and enjoying and extra “zero” due to impending rain.