Date: 2019-06-21
From: Rausch Gap shelter 

To: 501 shelter 
Miles today: 17.5
Weather: overcast clouds

Day 89I wish I was a giant frog for the last two days. It would be so much easier for a frog to hop through the water pools and mud pools on the trail. It rained through the night and morning. When I left the shelter at 7:30am, the rain was still going strong. As of yesterday, the trail was still full of water. The Rausch Creek along the trail was roaring. When I crossed the bridge over the creek, I could see the water was a brown torrent with white foams cascading down the creek loudly. Very soon, I reached a junction with a plaque ¢Beaver dam ahead¢. Another sign next to it pointed out the direction for an alternative dry route. I decided to take the beaver dam route since I like to see the dam. Also, if the water was high at the beaver dam, I could always turn around. On the way to there, a tall guy with a very light backpack run very fast and past me. Before I could ask him if he can wait for me at the dam in case the water is high, he¢s already charged far ahead. I was thinking that he might be trying to break the AT thru-hiking record! After about a half mile from the sign, I reached the beaver dam. I was just in time to see the runner past the long water trail at the dam. The water level looked ok. So I carefully folded the water, placing my feet on the branches in the water as much as possible, and always tested the depth of the water with my trekking poles before place my feet on the spots. The water at its deepest part was above my ankle. This was a huge beaver dam. I can tell it took generations of a beaver family to build and maintain this dam. In the rain and under dark sky, everything looked black and white, except a few patches of green leaves. The water looked as black as ink. Just after I crossed the dam section, a family of five with three kids came behind me. They were section hike the trail, not sure for how many days. The youngest boy was the most energetic one. In early morning, saw him carried 5 empty bottles from their campsite to get water from the shelter 0.3 miles away. He was the one running through the water trail in front of the family. It took me almost 20 minutes to cross the dam carefully. It took him less 5 minutes to run through the same section!A couple of hours after I passed the dam area, the rain stopped and the sun came out. I entered Swatara state park. Just when I thought the trail condition improved in the state park, it led me to a small creek with brown roaring water and no bridge. There was a log over the creek at a dangerous sloping angle. Between the bank of the creek and the log, someone placed a 2x4 wooden board about 10 feet long to close the gap. If it was dry and I could see the bottom of the creek, I might consider cross it. But the 2x4 was still wet and the log still held paddle of water. So I didn¢t want to take this risk. I turned around, hiked an additional 1 mile back to the road, then followed the road to the next section of the A.T.. This put my total distance of today to 19.2 miles. For the rest of the day, the trail was either boring with overgrown plants and muddy pockets, or it was rocky, with big and small rocks that always got your trekking pole stuck or made you no good place to put down your feet. But at the end after 7:20pm, I finally pulled into 501 shelter. When the night fall, I came out from the sleeping building, fireflies were everywhere in the air. They were dancing around between the trees, above the grasses, and around you. It¢s been so long since last time I saw fireflies by this large number! I stood there in the darkness, my eyes followed one firefly, then another, then another, round and round, I felt as if I was dancing with them, dancing with many spirits!