Date: 2006-06-22
From: Campsite at mile 1066

To: Pine Grove Furnace State Park
Miles today: 22.2
Weather: overcast clouds

Just after sunrise this morning all you could hear off in the distance was an approaching storm. Donkey and I rushed to put our rain fly¢s on our tents after sleeping under the stars last night. When I looked over where Hot Springs was tenting he was taking his tent down and packing his backpack even with the storm approaching. He was trying to make it to PA30 to hitch into town to watch another World Cup game but it was 6:20 in the morning. Just after he left the bottom fell out so I crawled back into my tent and went back to sleep for a while. When I woke back up it was 10:00am but it had finally stopped raining. Donkey and I packed up pretty quick and headed out without breakfast. We did this mainly because there was no water nearby and we only had a few ounces between the two of us. Within a few miles was Caledonia State Park so we headed there for breakfast. On the way to the park we passed US30. This is the easiest route into Gettysburg but we skipped it because we wanted to catch Jangles and Baro before the halfway point. We wanted to catch them so we could all try the half-gallon challenge together. While at CSP we ate a little breakfast and looked around the park. If we had a little more time we could spend all day here because they have a really nice pool that only cost a couple of dollars for a day pass to swim. After leaving the park we made our next stop at one of the nicest shelters yet on the trail. The Quarry Gap Shelter is actually two shelter joined by a nice porch with picnic table. On the front of the shelter the caretaker has impatient planted and a nice gravel area to sit around the fire pit. Too bad we didn't push on last night and stay here for the night. After the shelter not much happened for a while but we did pass a Boy Scout and Girl Scout troop out doing a little hiking. Some people hate to see these guys out on the trail but I always enjoy them. We pushed on to Toms Run Shelter and picked up Home Bound. He was also trying to make it to Pine Furnace before the camp store closed to knock out the half gallon of ice cream. He jumped in with our pace and the three of rolled into Pine Furnace State Park around 6:30pm to find Jane, Baro, Outbreak, and Morning Fit sitting around with their already empty ice cream containers. We purchased ours and didn¢t waste any time starting the challenge. See the challenge is to cross the midway mark on the AT and purchase a half-gallon of ice cream at the camp store at Pine Grove and finish it in less than 30 minutes. 25 minutes later I had consumed a half-gallon of chocolate ice cream for a total of 2720 calories. So what do I get other than a bellyache you may ask from eating all that ice cream? I got a wooded spoon. Don't really know what I am going to do with it but I now have it. After the challenge we decided to stay in the park for the night so we headed down to the campground and quickly pitched our tents because of another approaching storm. We all ended up stuck in our tents at sundown with a sugar rush from all the ice cream. Let me tell you a 20 square foot of tent space gets pretty small when trapped in it for long spans of time. Happy to be half way and happy to be full of ice cream we all retired for the night pretty early. Tonight: Jane, Baro, Donkey, Morning Fit, Outbreak, Home Bound, and I