10/13 - 10/18 Pennsylvania Part II

Day 95

Wednesday October 13th

Stream side campsite

973.2 - 985.4 = 12.2

We make the mistake of falling asleep in our big soft bed at the Bismarck B&B without first putting in ear plugs. We are awoken at 5:20 by the unmistakable rumble of garbage trucks. We try and fail to go back to sleep. Breakfast is included with our stay and is set out for us in the dining room downstairs by 7:00. One other room is occupied and we don’t feel like having breakfast banter, so we go down first thing and eat before they come down. Breakfast is nothing exciting, pancakes that probably come from a boxed mix, biscuits probably also from a box or can, fruit, hard boiled eggs, orange juice and coffee. It’s a bit on the sugary side with all the white flour.

At 9:30 the lady that runs the B&B takes us back to the trail. The ride in the car is the only interaction we have had with her. All other communications were done via text message. She seems nice enough. Her husband is retired and she is a teacher, doing classes through the internet. She drives us the few miles back to Port Clinton and drops us off at the Barber Shop. It’s a hiker friendly business that also cuts hair. Jeff need a beard trim and they even cut my hair too! $20 for both of us! The place also doubles as an antique shop and there are something like a dozen rocking chairs inside for waiting customers and also for hikers. We get to sit awhile and use the power outlets and enjoy coffee and pastries. We each have a very heavy duty brownie.

Fueled by more sugar we set out around 11. So far we’ve been stalling. We don’t have much motivation to be hiking today. It’s overcast and dreary again and the packs are always heavier after a resupply. We climb up out of town and back onto a big wide plateau of the ridge. After awhile we stop for more quick sugar snacks, the rest of the pumpkin bread from Millie. It’s delicious and gets us a few more hours down the trail.

The trail passes through state game lands today that contain gravel roads for hunting access I guess. The AT used to be on these roads but is now in the forest parallel to the roads. We choose to walk on the road and enjoy walking big long strides without having to watch the ground. We also enjoy the brightness of not being enclosed in the forest. The trail criss crosses the road several times, but we stay on the road for about 7 miles! We see one truck go past us and we dream of hitching a ride in the back of it!

We could keep going on the road another couple miles, but Jeff gets bored of it, so we go back onto the trail in the late afternoon. The rocks aren’t too bad, and the forest canopy isn’t too dense. The trees are nice and tall, allowing in a good amount of light. We stop for one final sugar snack, Hydrox cookies. We got them from Cracker Barrel and are excited to try them, as they are the original sandwich creme cookie. Oreo was a copy cat! The theme of the day today is sugar, our previous meal having been a mini pumpkin pie and a banana moon pie! These quick stops and quick energy are the keys to our success today though!

We make it a few more miles before stopping for the evening at a teeny tiny stream, the only water we’ve seen all day. We stop a little early at 6 but decide it’s worth it to not have to carry water anywhere. We get a nice little campsite to ourselves. We see no other hikers all day! We make it a pretty good distance thanks to our near continuous walking and quick snack stops. We have a healthier dinner, apples, refried beans and oatmeal on whole wheat tortillas with tomatoes and some peanut butter and jelly on triscuits. The beans and oatmeal sounds weird, but taste and texture wise it’s very similar to a rice and bean burrito.

Antique store and Barber Shop in Port Clinton. The trail goes right through town and the barber shop is only about a quarter mile off the trail.

This is the center of town. There isn’t much here and that’s why hikers go to Hamburg to resupply.

We walk through the rail yard of the Reading Anthracite tourism train.

A view from one of the gravel roads today

And another view with a nice Norway Spruce hanging over the road

We got these at Cracker Barrel and were really excited to see them because we didn’t know you could still buy them. We watched a history show on television about these cookies and their rivalry with nabisco.

Day 96

Thursday October 14th

Fisher Overlook

985.4 - 997.8 = 12.4

It’s once again dark and foggy out when our alarm goes off at 6:30. The fog has been with us for over a week and although twilight begins at 6:45 it doesn’t brighten up much. We are slow to get going and don’t make it down the trail until 8. We tried to have a quick breakfast of a pop tart and a protein drink but then we delayed ourselves further by deciding to have some peanut butter and jelly English muffins. We stop for snacks frequently today and they delay us. We have a long mid morning oatmeal break, then a lunch stop of Luna bars and hydrox cookies. Second lunch is Clif bars and pretzels with peanut butter on them. In the late afternoon we have lupini beans, an apple and a larabar. With all these breaks we don’t make it far and by our 6th meal, dinner time, we’ve only gone 12.4 miles!

Just before oatmeal break and while it’s still foggy and we are feeling unmotivated, I check Google maps to see where the nearest Cracker Barrel is located. I learn that we haven’t made it far from Hamburg and could be back there with the help of a car in half and hour. We keep dreaming of the steak fries at Cracker Barrel. Soon they will be ours. While I’m looking at the map, I see that Hersey isn’t far from us and I recognize it’s name as the place where Hershey’s Chocolate comes from. I get to thinking that it would be a great place for Joe and Ashley (Jeff’s brother and sister in law) to come visit us and rescue us from the trail for a day! They live in Delaware and had expressed an interest in driving up to Pennsylvania to see us at some point. Jeff begins the process of getting them to plan something.

It does finally get sunny after about 11 and we have our first clear blue sky day in more than a week we think. The forest is also prettier today, mostly oak and hickory with nice fall colors and colorful leaf litter. There are plenty of rocks to slow us down though! We have lots of nice view points today and even a big creek midway through the day. We end up having a lovely time, but just wish we could be more disciplined and make it more miles!

Just before camp we stop at the 501 shelter for water. The shelter is located along PA Route 501 and has a water spigot, outdoor shower and an on-site caretaker that usually lets hikers charge their phones on the front porch of his house next door. The shelter is a fully enclosed cabin with a sky light in the ceiling and inside there are trash and recycle bins, bunks and a picnic table. You can get Italian food delivered too! We don’t really know how it works, but think that the caretaker must get to live in the house for free in exchange for watching over the shelter and making sure it doesn’t get taken over by homeless people. The place is somehow affiliated with the AMC. There was a similar site a few days ago, before the Pinnacle, but we didn’t go to it. It was called Eckville Shelter.

It all sounds great but we continue on a little further to a view ledge to camp for the night. We get to have dinner with a view and are early to get to bed. It doesn’t really matter how far we went today because we will still be going to the same campsite tomorrow, a shelter in 16.7 miles. Tomorrow will now be a longer day than today, instead of the other way around. We planned to stay in the shelter tomorrow and one the next day too, because it may rain. It sounds like we will now be getting picked up on Saturday though, and will get to escape the rain!

Upon quick first inspection of the Hershey Park website images of these guys filled our heads and motivated us along down the trail! Dreams of chocolate land…

We took a little side trail to the Buck’s County High Point. It was just a forested mound. Bucks County is where the lantern fly outbreak began.

Some signage for a trail reroute that must be so old that we weren’t even aware that there was any reroute, based on our maps. It says closed for environmental reasons. We wonder what that means.

A view south over the farm fields. In the sunny areas on the view ledge we were being swarmed by lady bugs, so we didn’t stay long.

1200 miles for NOBOs means we still have 1200 more to go.

Fall color forest, black Tupelo and hickory.

Shower Steps view

An unexpected extra view today that was unmarked on our map but found by walking though a campsite just above the Shower Steps

Pretty colored leaf litter. Looking back on it, we think the reddish leaves are from black Tupelo trees.

Nice forest today

This is witch hazel it is a little tree or shrub. The flowers are like little hairs and are hard to photograph.

The canopy of a beech tree.

501 Shelter

Inside the shelter under the unique skylight

Fisher Overlook with views to the South, which is the direction of our scenic viewing all day.

Sunset at Fisher Overlook

Day 97

Friday October 15th

Rausch Gap Shelter

997.8 - 1014.7 = 16.9

Hooray! No fog in the morning! We are fast as lightning getting out of the tent! We’re packed up, ready to go and walking within 45 minutes. We knew we were capable of such feats it just hadn’t happened yet! Pop tarts are the key to our success this morning, they make for a quick and calorie dense breakfast! It’s 400 calories for 2 Pop-Tarts!! This is our first and perhaps only purchase of pop tarts the whole trip, we just had to try the pretzel kind, and they don’t disappoint! The more time we spend on the trail the lower my healthy food standards go!

We go 4 miles to the William Penn Shelter before stopping for a more lengthy breakfast break. The shelter is off the trail a bit, but it’s a huge two story one that we really wanted to see. It’s located in a pretty forest with lots of falling yellow leaves that are beautifully lit by the sun. We stay far too long, at almost an hour and a half but it’s hard to have a day without oatmeal!

We walk for many miles near the edge of the ridge and can actually see off between the trees. It’s rather hazy out but the sky is blue and it’s sunny and even hot! It gets over 80 today, that just seems crazy for mid October. Until now it’s continued to be warm enough for shorts and t-shirts every day and for me to be comfortable in my sandals. Cooler temperatures are coming soon though. I haven’t had to hike in socks yet and we’ve only used our pants a handful of times. It will be interesting to finally have cold weather. Because of today’s heat the eye bugs come back with a vengeance and even some mosquitos and I find myself wearing my head net most of the day.

We have a mix of rocky and easy trail. We come down off our ridge in the afternoon at Swatara Gap and pass through Swatara Gap State Park. The park is along the Swatara River, which the AT crosses on a historic bridge. There’s a trailhead parking lot, benches and a paved rail trail for bicycles. I long to zip away on a bicycle! We can see on a park map that there are also dedicated mountain biking trails in the park. Looks like a neat place!

Through the state park we have the option to walk on a paved road parallel to the trail, PA Route 443. We gladly take the road to escape the rocks, walk swiftly and enjoy wide open views of the ridges surrounding the gap. I felt slow as molasses all morning and didn’t know how I’d ever hike all day, but as is usual I begin feeling better in the afternoon. Just before camp we get another little road walk on a lovely and remote forest road. The road is an official detour around an area of trail that was flooded by beavers. We gladly take the alternate and thoroughly enjoy it.

It’s well before dark when we make it to camp at the Rausch Gap Shelter. Some other SOBOs have caught up to us today, Tracker, a girl who we met at the Yellow Deli in Rutland and haven’t seen since Vermont and another couple called Marathon and TreeBeard, who we’d never met. We are camped in one of the prettiest forests we’ve seen in a while with lots of tall and old trees. The area was once a coal mining town of 1,000! We had wanted to sleep in the shelter because rain may be coming but it appears to be holding off, so we sleep nearby in our tent for a more restful nights sleep.

1,000 SOBO miles

The William Penn Shelter is very large with room for at least a dozen people to sleep inside. We stopped to cook oatmeal here.

Our first rattlesnake sighting! It wouldn’t move from the middle of the trail, so we had to go bushwhacking around it

Crossing under interstate 81 at Swatara Gap

Historic bridge over Swatara Creek. This bridge was once used for cars in a nearby location and was retired and moved here for use by AT hikers and state park visitors.

The view of the ridges on our road walk of PA Route 443

Going back to the forest and ridges after our road walk

Detour around the overflowing beaver dam.

Strange but beautiful. Mining upstream left the water here too acidic for fish, to fix that the water is diverted into a limestone well, causing it to come out more basic and thus suitable for aquatic life.

Informational sign detailing how the limestone wells work

Another sign describing how this valley was saved by one man who cared!

Rausch Gap Shelter

Day 98

Saturday, October 16th

Clark’s Valley Road

1014.7 - 1025.8 = 11.1

It doesn’t rain overnight and there is no fog in the morning. We spring out of the tent and are walking by 7, before it’s even fully bright. We have only 11 miles to go today before getting picked up by Jeff’s brother and his family. The walking is leisurely on flat ground with few rocks. The rocks we do see are smooth and rounded versus the pointy fins we have been having to deal with. We have been on ridges for weeks, but today we get to walk in a valley below the ridges and the trees are tall and beautiful. There’s a lovely undergrowth of giant laurel and rhododendron bushes.

For days we’ve been hearing the endless barrage of machine gun fire. We have been near Ft Indiantown Gap military base, but today it sounds closer than ever. The firing seems to go all day every day. We ponder the number of bullets they are going through and wonder if it’s really necessary. Other than that, it’s a great day of walking! The rain that was supposed to come last night holds off until 1 and we even get a little sun before that. For the last couple miles we walk in the rain with our umbrellas, but it is just light rain.

Joe drives nearly 4 hours from Delaware to pick us up on PA Route 325, Clark’s Valley Road. We arrive before him and wait for about an hour, but we have the dense canopy of a mature hemlock tree to protect us from the rain. At about 3 PM Joe pulls up in a brand new truck and whisks us away to chocolate land. We spend the afternoon with him and his family in Hershey Pennsylvania at Hershey Park. It’s a bit of sensory overload for Jeff and I, but it’s an interesting change of pace for us from life on the trail. I didn’t realize Hersey Park was an amusement park with roller coasters, I thought it was just chocolate related tourism, so that is a big surprise for me! We also learn that the park is only open in the evening, so rather than go tomorrow during the day like we thought we might, we have to go tonight. Luckily the rain doesn’t last too long and we have a nice clear evening at the park.

Cool mushrooms growing out of a knot in a downed tree trunk

Enjoying stone furniture at the yellow springs campsite

Yellow Spings, the site of a coal mining village in the 1850s

Flat road like trail as we near Clark’s Valley Road

An iron rich spring with orange colored water

Walking in the rain in the forest of tall trees near Clark’s Valley Road

The one photo I took a Hershey Park! A monument is to Mister Hersey and an information plaque about how the park got its beginnings.

Day 99

Sunday October 17th

Peter’s Mountain Shelter

1025.8 - 1032.5 = 6.7

Even though we went to bed late and we sleep inside a hotel with eye masks on, I am still on hiker schedule and my eyes open and 6:15! The hotel no longer does a full breakfast because of COVID. They give us a paper bag containing a blueberry muffin, a fruit cup and a nature valley granola bar. We take them for trail snacks. I wonder if hotel breakfast will ever come back. We go to the Cocoa Diner instead, which is nearby our hotel, The Inn at Chocolate Avenue. I like all of the fun chocolate names. I expected the Hershey Park to have more of a chocolatey theme to it, but it was more of an amusement park for rides. We will have to come back here one day and take the chocolate factory tour and perhaps dine in the fancy chocolatier restaurant at the park. We hear you can make chocolate bars on one of the tours!

Before we check out of the hotel we take another shower and rinse our clothes in there too. We feel good as new when we come out. We squeeze the clothes dry with towels and put them right back on, that’s the only way they will dry. The hotel had a washer and dryer but no quarters or detergent at the front desk. On the way back to the trail we visit a Walmart so we can get a few fresh foods, salad, hummus, apples and bananas.

It’s just after noon when we arrive back to the trailhead. It’s cool and breezy today and we get cold quickly if standing still. It may be cold from here on out. We hike back up to the ridge, then it’s easy ridge walking all the way to camp. We stop early at the Peter’s Mountain Shelter around 4. The water source at the shelter is 1/4 mile steeply down the ridge and is access via 300 stone steps. Water collection is time consuming as a result, so we don’t go down there right away. The next water and shelter are 6.7 miles away and we don’t have quite enough day light to make it there so we don’t try. The shelter has bear lockers and inside are a variety of beers that someone packed in and left for the hikers! We each get two premium craft beers and get to sit at a picnic table inside the shelter while we enjoy them. Tracker is here with us because she took a zero in the Rausch Gap shelter yesterday. She walked 18 miles today! She also is unmotivated to go down to the water immediately and we watch in horror as she uses a high alcohol craft porter to cook her mashed potatoes in! She doesn’t seem to have much knowledge of beer. We offer her some of our water and try to convince her to at least use a more mild beer if she must use beer for cooking, but she proceeds anyway. Her stove boils over from all the carbonation, but she manages to save enough of the liquid. We can only imagine what the resulting potatoes taste like!

We have an easy no cook dinner of apples and hummus salad wraps and mint chocolate larabars for dinner. We don’t know what to do with ourselves, stopping so early and not needing to cook anything! It’s only 6:30 by the time we are laying down. Tracker set up her tent nearby, so it’s just us in the shelter for the first time in awhile.

View from Kinter View of Clark’s Valley Road. We drove 10 miles up this valley to get back on the trail where we got off and now we walk back down it and it takes a lot longer on foot.

Nice signage from the Susquehanna Appalachian Trail Club.

Peter’s Mountain Shelter

Day 100

Monday October 18th

Cove Mountain Shelter

1032.5 - 1047.5 = 15

It’s one long straight line of a ridge from Clark’s Valley, where we got on yesterday, to Duncannon, our next town. We continue our walk along the ridge this morning. It’s pretty narrow at the top of the ridge and we can often see off both sides at the same time. It’s cool and breezy and the walking is easy.

After lunch, we come down off the ridge and begin a 3 mile road walk into town. We cross railroad tracks and have to climb over a parked train. We cross a few busy highway frontage roads, then cross the massive Susquehanna River and the Juniata River on road bridges. Once across the river it’s a full mile past houses on High Street on the way into town.

We stop at a little gear store and hostel called Kind Of Outdoorsy. I sent some packages from Amazon there, containing some harder to find snacks foods, Bobo’s Oat Bars, Raw Meal protein powder, Protein Puck bars and Nairn’s Oat Biscuits. We had intended to stay overnight in the hostel but that was before we knew we were going to Hershey Park. Now our arrival to town is different than what it would have been. We’ve only come 11 miles today and feel the need to keep going a little further since there is still plenty of daylight. I feel bad just picking up the packages and leaving, so we buy some additional foods from the store. It is surprisingly well stocked with hiker foods. In many ways it would be nice to stay, we’d be the only ones in the hostel, we could take more showers, wear loaner clothes, sleep in a bed, use electricity and wifi and artificial lights at night and be warm and eat Italian restaurant food. This is one of the downsides of thru hiking, having to pull yourself away from such comforts and keep hiking as much as possible.

Before we leave town, we visit the post office. I found another hikers ID on the side of a forest road back near Palmerton a week or so ago. We managed to get in contact with her online to arrange to send it ahead to her. Inside the post office is a hiker box that is well stocked with bars from a food bank. We get 6 Clif bars, a backpackers pantry freeze dried meal and a few other nut based bars. In addition to sending away the ID, we send away half of the bars that we just had delivered. We will pick them up from another town in a few days, to lighten our loads today.

We get out of town with about 2 hours of daylight to spare and go another 4 miles. We have many stone steps to go up in order to get back onto the ridge. At the top we have a nice view from Hawk Rock, which is a popular day hike. We see lots of day hikers and learn that there is a nice loop hike here with a better view point that the AT doesn’t go to. The views are of Duncannon and the Susquehanna River. It would be nice to detour over there, but we don’t have time. We make it to Cove Mountain Shelter just as it’s getting dark. There’s no one else at the shelter, so we get to sleep inside.

For dinner and to celebrate day 100 on trail, we have our first ramen bomb of the trip. I make it with some gourmet additions, dried veggies, Trader Joe’s 21 seasoning blend, fresh garlic and nutritional yeast. I use garlic and chive flavored mashed potato and a Nissan Raoh ramen cake. According to the package, this is the king of ramen. The potatoes are so salty that I don’t add the ramen seasoning packet. The result is insanely delicious and satisfying. It’s probably a good thing that we waited this long to try or surely we’d have become addicted.

Table Rock view in the morning

We saw these power lines from Joe’s truck on the way back to the trail and it took us until this morning to reach them!

We sure have seen a lot of graffiti in Pennsylvania at every high point on every ridge.

View south towards the Susquehanna River Valley

View of the view ledge

Another powerline view this time to the north of the Susquehanna River Valley

Susquehanna River

Rocky spine of a trail on the way down off the ridge to the Susquehanna and Duncannon.

Infestation of lantern flies just before we reached the river. They were on every tree like this! We (hikers) are supposed to kill the ones we see in order to stop the spread, but there is no way when there are this many!

Susquehanna River and the Clark’s Ferry Bridge

Climbing over a train is not so easy and a little scary too. Peter and Kae are now two days ahead of us and warned us about this train, so we at least knew that it probably wouldn’t be moving anytime soon, but it was still a little creepy.