Date: 2017-08-19
From: Palmerton

To: Dan's Pulpit
Miles today: 22.2
Weather: few clouds

The restaurant owner took one look at me as I walked in and immediately said: "Dirty hikers!" I looked back at him and said: "Well, it's a dirty restaurant, so we'll fit right in."His laughter showed I'd chosen the right response.The Blue Mountain Summit B&B has a bit of a mixed reputation on the trail, based on reviews from previous hikers cited by Guthook. One talked about how the owner insulted the group of seven hikers for their entire meal, despite being the only customers.But I suspected before I arrived that he was someone who enjoys getting a rise from complete strangers. The correct strategy was to respond in kind.By the time we left, he'd been sitting at our table cracking jokes and then laughing uproariously as we showed him the reviews of his place -- and, more particularly, him -- on Guthook.Better still, the burgers and fries powered me for the rest of the afternoon and helped me do my longest day in some time.That top-up meal was after a town breakfast at Bert's had already powered me through the first half of the day. Stodge really does make a difference when it comes to hiking, at least for my metabolism.The three Goldilocks and the Bear had rocked up into town the previous afternoon and, when the downpour began, quickly reached the same conclusion about taking a nero.All six of us headed back to the trail after breakfast, driven by the manager of Bert's and by the shuttle driver, who was a 2016 AT thru-hiker who was forced off the trail by injury here and has been here ever since.Train and I leapfrogged them through the morning, until they took an extended lunch break just before a particularly rocky section.This included the knife edge -- yet another feature that wouldn't even have had a name if it had been in Maine and which barely slowed us down. After that, the trail reverted to fast and flat forestry roads."I will take the rocks of Pennsylvania," Train said, "if most of the trail is like this."Four miles after our burgers-with-sarcasm-on-the-side, we reached the Allentown Hiking Club shelter, which shows the lack of effort put into tread quality was inversely proportional to the effort to make the shelters appealing. This one even had a chess board installed on the porch.The Goldilocks crew were aiming to stay, and Train was meeting a friend of his brother (or some similar kind of two-degrees-of-separation connection) for trail magic the next day.But I still felt like I had gas in the tank and I wanted to reduce the distance I needed to do the next day to reach Port Clinton, so I pushed on.Immediately after the shelter, the forestry road ended and the rocks resumed, but some trail crew has spent time arranging them into a smooth surface akin to crazy paving. I took a photo to show that not all the rocks of Pennsylvania are bad.After that, I used my standard practice of opting for the first decent campsite after 7pm. After passing a few marginal ones shortly before that arbitrary cut-off time, I reached the top of the hill at Dan's Pulpit and found a great site with an outstanding view.I'd briefly pondered cowboy camping on the rocks but the abortive last cowboy camping experience and the presence of some mosquitoes had me pitching the tent instead.This decision was vindicated when I turned on my phone and found the clear skies forecast of that morning had been replaced by a thunderstorm warning. Soon after a short sharp storm rolled through, but the accompanying rain didn't even fully wet the tent fly. I heard later from people who were merely a few miles away who were soaked by a massive but highly-localised downpour.Life is good.AT fact of the day: Throughout the AT so far, I've picked up any trash I'd encountered. On sections clearly only hiked by thru-hikers, there was virtually none but anywhere with day hikers -- such as the series of easily-reached lookout crags we walked past today -- there was so much rubbish that I had to stop picking it up...