Date: 2017-06-16
From: Darlington Shelter

To: Duncannon
Miles today: 11.3
Weather: moderate rain

We got a little rain last night, so I had to close my rain fly (which I had left open for ventilation) at ~1130pm. I initially woke up at 530, but as I usually do these day, I rolled over and went back to bed until 7. When I finally did get up I had my 2 oatmeals for breakfast (which I may have to look into changing... they're getting old at this point) and loaded the rest of my snacks into my hipbelts for the day. My food bag empty except for a spare dinner, I packed up and headed out.Not far down the trail I passed a trough with dirty/brackish water in it, perhaps a remnant of when this land was used for livestock. The water was something I would never drink on the AT but probably a perfectly good PCT water source. I hiked through several fields of wild flowers, various white and purple blooms sprinkled throughout. I passed some blackberry bushes, their fruit just turning red and would hopefully be fully ripe in not too long.I would learn later that I missed trail magic at one of the road crossing, yet again showing the folly of leaving camp "early". The trail crossed a small stream, the last on-trail water for the next 7mi into Duncannon, so I grabbed a liter as I chatted with a couple of Kiwis (whose trail names I forget).AWOL (which I should perhaps explain is my shorthand way of referring to the AT guide that I'm using, written by a guy named AWOL) warned that the next 7mi of trail into town were rocky, but although there were some rockier sections, it wasn't really too bad. In talking later, we'd decide that he was just trying to psych us up for the really rocky sections of trail that we'd face coming up, but we'll see.While walking and listening to music I came across a particularly appropriate song lyric..."For once, once in your lifeFor once push your ambitions asideAnd instead of moving mountainsLet the mountains move you"I like it... thought it fit my current lifestyle... thought I'd share.Anyways, the trail eventually came to a rocky outcrop from which I could see Duncannon spread out below as well as the massive girth of the Susquehanna River winding through the valley it had cut. On the other side of the river, a highway (that I've driven many times to get to hiking trails in northern PA) wound along the bank and the horns of trains could be heard eminating from both shores. I found Zorba at the overlook and we chatted for a while about various things... Our plans for after the trail, how quick the trail was flying by now, and how he had almost left trail to go pursue some other adventures but figured that he might as well finish now that we're so close (in thru hiker terms at least). Eventually he decided to move on and I lingered for a few extra minutes until I was joined by Aaron, who had hiked this section before and have me a couple tips about Duncannon (ie, don't stay at the Doyle, how to find the new church hostel in town, about the shuttle to the grocery store, etc).I pushed on, wanting to get into town in time to get lunch and started down a set of very steep rocky steps built into the loose rock on the hillside. As I descended the hill felt so steep that I could almost see down the chimneys of the houses below. As I was nearing the bottom the full force of town assaulted my nose, the aroma of cars and trains and pollution hitting me at once in a not very pleasant way.Walking into town I caught up with Zorba and Chops and we set about finding the hostel. This hostel only opened a couple weeks ago and so wasn't in AWOL. It turns out that the fact that the hostel is in a church doesn't narrow things down too much when there are 8 churches in town, so eventually we ended up asking the fire station for directions.The hostel is located on the trail as it passes through town along High St, in the basement of a church with a large "hikers welcome" sign out front. The downstairs is a large room that had a kitchen along one side, a bathroom, and a couple of hikers already spread out on it. They do Sunday school down here and so ask the hikers to vacate early on Sunday mornings, but otherwise give us the run of the place in exchange for us keeping it clean.We got cleaned up and then headed downtown again, stopping by the Doyle for some food. Though the building may be historic, in my opinion it's dirtiness and run down appearance has drained alot of it's charm. Inside, the walls were somewhat stained from the days that smoking was permitted indoors (which was a while ago...)  and the walls were adorned with alien paraphinalia and a show about aliens played on the TV in the corner. It certainly had a unique vibe... But the food and beer were cheap, so whatever. We were going to wait for the 4pm shuttle up to the grocery store, but we had a couple hours until then, so we headed across the street to a pretzel shop because they advertised cotton candy and Zorba had been craving some. The lady warned us that it took 15min for the machine to warm up, but we had nothing but time to kill, so that wasn't a problem. As we waited we chatted with her and heard about the town politics... But I won't get into that here.As we waited she gave us some peanut butter fudge that she had made that morning when she was bored and then the machine was finally ready. She told us about how the first time she had made it the cotton candy had flown everywhere faster than they could bag it, handed Zorba a paper cone, told him to get ready, and dumped the sugar in. Immediately strands of blue silk started flying up out of the center and he frantically waved his wand through the air attempting to catch it all. She repeated the process with each of us, dumping in a couple scoops of sugar so that we each ended up with a cloud of cotton candy bigger than our head. She was laughing the entire time and at the end she wouldn't accept money for it, having had fun watch us make it ourselves. After that we headed home (for the night, anyways) and all took a nap for about an hour until it was time for the store. We caught the shuttle (run by whoever the store had on staff was available at 4) and managed to fit 8 hikers in the minivan. I shopped and met up with the others waiting out front of the store for everyone to finish, when I noticed that Zorba had found a box of giant eclairs. Regret struck immediately and I headed back into the store, returning with my own eclairs and some extra fruit to snack on. We caught the shuttle back the ~1mi down to town and then headed back to the hostel.This hostel is awesome! and the pastor also provides dinner daily, tonight was delivery pizza which we all enjoyed. After dinner I just chilled, catching up on internet and hanging out with the others. I found a tiny bottle of lotion in the hiker box and I used it on my feet... GAME CHANGER... it's so good. My feet were so dry and hard and the lotion makes them feel infinitely better. Definitely packing this out.In other news, Jesus (who is apparently a hiker, who knew!) is staying here at the church with us tonight, so that's special. Also, I might end up staying a night with Slipper's sister next week when I get up towards the end of PA, which would be cool. We'll see!