Legs and Borders

"Happiness does have a smell" written on water bottle cache Long day with amazing surprise at the end. I've woke up at 4 AM in the morning in order to hike 32 miles to the town called Delaware Water Gap and be there at a reasonable time to check in to a donation based church that hosted hikers. I've put the head torch on and packed all my variously wet items up. It seemed like the rain was over for the time being. The whole day was mainly skipping over rocks and climbing the boulders but at least the path was not going up or down much. I was making really good progress and there was even a little bit of sunshine poking through the clouds in the afternoon. Trail was empty, I must have met three people the entire day. Wolf Rock was the highlight of the day, a mile long boulder covered ridge, which was quite slippery after the rain so I had to take it slowly here while turkey vultures were patrolling the area. I've started the desc...

It doesn't matter how small the rain is, if it falls on you all day it will make you wet. It wasn't raining when I woke up though, everything was nice and dry when I was packing up. I knew the forecast was predicting rain all day, but the forecast was wrong in the past. You never knew precisely what's the weather going to be in the Appalachian mountains, well to a degree. It did start to drizzle two hours later and it carried on for the entire day but at this point I was already commited to the white blaze. Other than the weather it was a surprisingly fun day, I went over the Knifes Edge a tricky rock scrambling section fairly early in the morning, I've folded my trekking poles here and used hands to manoeuvre around the rocky ridge, the scramble lasted about 15 minutes. The path from here was either extremely rocky or a perfectly smooth and easy forest road walk. I've met just two other hikers today: Half Stick and Not Yet, every...

You know you made it as a hiker when you are having Walmart's New York style cheesecake and nacho cheese Doritos for supper. In the morning I've hiked the remaining 13 miles to the town called Port Clinton and arrived there at 11 AM, unfortunately there was nowhere to resupply. The only restaurant was in a hotel and required you to have a shower before entering the premises. I decided to give it a pass and get a hitchhike to Walmart three miles down the road instead. After 10 minutes of sticking my thumb up an Indian gentleman who just moved to Port Clinton few months ago picked me up. At the supermarket I've resupplied for another five days and got a footlong sandwich at Subway (it seems like I'm getting addicted to those). I've also bumped into Freewill and Packrunner doing their shopping, I wasn't expecting to see them here! It turned out that Packrunner was starting her "cycle" so they changed their initial plan ...

Big day on the trail squeaking with chipmunks. The only goal for today was to hike good miles, I've also managed to complete a side quest and had a shower at Stay-AT-Swatara hostel which was very much needed. After an initial climb, trail was fairly level for the whole day, rocky terrain was coming in and out of view but it was to be expected in Pennsylvania. I've met a lot of day hikers moving in big family groups, trying to take advantage of the good weather while it lasted. In the afternoon I've met day hiker called Graff and his partner they were from New Jersey. He told me that he was trying to thru hike AT few years ago but he lost so much weight after completing 1700 miles that he had to stop hiking for medical and safety reasons. Now he was planning to section hike the remaining 500 miles to complete his journey. I've managed to have a bigger day than expected but my food supply was running low, I was debating weather to hitchhike to Walmart tomorrow...