Date: 2006-06-27
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Miles today: 0.0

After getting a sluggish start I finally got moving. I started making good time on the easy terrain. The Cumberland Valley is nice cause it cuts across several farms and is relatively flat. When I made it to the first shelter I popped in to get a brief break from the storm and to check the register. I saw that some one had written "I hope there is room at the Doyle hotel." That made me start to wonder if it was going to be full. I decided to call and make a reservation. When I called the lady who answered said they didn¢t take reservations. She asked if I was on the trail. Then she asked my name. That was followed by her yelling to the whole bar through the phone, "Does anyone know River Weasel?" Well first of all if you ask any hiker if they know me, 7 out of 10 times they will say yes. If you ask a hiker in a bar if they know me then 12 out of 10 will say hell yes. Through the phone I heard almost the whole bar vouch for me.   So she said she would keep me in mind and not to worry about it. That got me a little worried. I was wondering who was at the bar vouching for me before noon. Then I started thinking who was there getting ready to leave and heard I was coming and decide1d to stay. (Not because I am so cool but because thru-hikers will find any reason to stay and drink.)   I then decided to drop down to all fours and start Weasel'n. I was cruising about 4 miles an hour. The rain didn¢t want to stop. It kept pouring down but that was cool because it wasn¢t hot and humid. I finally got to an over look where I could see the town down in the valley and the trail went down off the ridge line. After I left the ridge line I thought it was going to be all down hill. No. I went half way down and it made a pointless turn halfway back up the mountain.   I finally got out of the woods where the trail goes down the main drag of town. It of course started raining harder. As I was walking down the road I only got splashed by 3 cars driving by. What you see in the movies is exactly the way it happens, you get soaked. I finally saw the neon of the Doyle hotel. A ¢must stop¢ on the trail. It was built in 1901 by Anheuser-Busch. When I first walked into the establishment to get a room, the sweet lady behind the bar asked, "do you need a drink?" then "do you need a room". She assumed I was River Weasel maybe cause how wet I was. While in the bar I started looking around to see who vouched for me. I saw Mule. He said he planed on leaving. He had his pack packed and when he heard I was coming decided to stay. I couldn¢t blame him. We decided to split a room and start drinking. Next thing I knew FDR walked in. The three major contributors to the "Wild and Wonderful West by God Virginia" crazy night were back together again. It was happy hour and I was happy just to be out of the pouring rain that we had been having for so long. There was something not right about this town. The whole town seemed a little high strung. The locals were drinking a lot and chain smoking cigarettes.   After sitting there for a bit and talking with the locals I soon realized that the river I crossed, that I would have been scared to raft, wasn¢t the major one in town. I then took a walk and saw the Susquehanna which is the longest river the trail crosses. 444 miles. It is a mile wide at its widest part. I then realized we were in for a crazy night. One thing I have learned while on the trail. Don¢t listen to television, listen to the locals. They have seen it before and will see it again. Some were running home to protect their house. Others were getting drunk cause they live on the mountains and their houses were safe. And then there were those who where getting really drunk cause their houses were already under water. We hung out for a while and offered to fill sand bags. We even thought about making a sign that says "will bag sand for beer" but didn¢t think the locals would see the humor. FDR, Mule and I decided to do a Duncannon bar crawl. We walked down the street to the next bar and rocked out to the juke box for a while. The phone rang and it was the Doyle Hotel looking for Mule. I can only imagine that phone call. "Do you have a guy named Jeff there?" We didn¢t even flinch. It¢s crazy how you get so used to your trail name that you almost forget your real name. He had to run back and settle up his tab cause they were closing early due to the state of emergency that had been declared. Once he got back we had another drink and decided to head out. Again the feeling that the town was crazy. People were running around and everyone who came in the door was soaked. Right before we left one of the local ladies who helps hikers invited us up to her apartment for a beer and to watch a home video of a front loader truck shuttling hikers across a bridge that had been washed out. That bridge was only about a day¢s hike away so we didn¢t know if the water would be higher or lower when we got there but it looked intense. After we left Mary's apartment to head back to the hotel, we were stopped. Mule said he didn¢t feel like going back yet and wanted to do something. FDR and I agreed. That¢s when we saw another bar across the street. It was the third and last bar in town so we decided to continue the "Funcannon Bar Crawl" and check it out. When we got inside we found out they had $1 Yeinling drafts. We were in heaven. We stayed there till it close and headed back to the Doyle for the night. Once we walked out the door into the streets, it felt like we stepped back in time. You can picture the way the town looked back in the day with dirt roads and horse and buggy. With the rain pouring down and random people running around town, it looked just like a scene out of an old western where the towns people knew there was going to be a gun fight on this rainy night and were clearing out of the town hoping to wake up in the morning and their belongings still there. We weren¢t worried about a gun fight, we just wondering if the rain would stop by morning. Probably not.