Date: 2003-07-26
From: Port Clinton, Pa

To: Port Clinton, Pa
Miles today: 15.2
Weather: broken clouds

Our walk through the storms earlier this week went through a stretch of country, unbroken by habitation, known as St. Anthony's Wilderness. Trudging along through one of Tuesday's downpours, I became aware that I was on a remarkably wide, level, and rock-free section of trail. The blue-blaze path from the AT to the shelter at Rausch Gap was the same, and at many spots on the way, there were odd-looking hillocks grown over with trees and fern. Old rail beds and pit bings. Ditches and a ruined, dry stone well very close to the AT were other clues that there had been a village at Rausch Gap. It had flourished around 1850, I learned later, not only from coal mining, which was obvious, but also from a railway engine maintenance business until the late 1800s. Sitting near the well on Wednesday morning, taking a water and snack break, with only a timid deer buck thirty yards away for company, I found it a little eerie in the dead quiet of the woods looking at the slimmest of signs that a community had once thrived here. How did it all end?, where did they all go?, and other questions with no certain answers flooded into my mind. Could the people here have imagined that only a hundred years later there would be so little evidence that they had ever existed? Last night, we ate, drank and showered at the Port Clinton Hotel. All the rooms were taken so we headed out to The Pavilion for the night. Out on Penn Street, the pavilion is a large wooden covered area provided by the St. John's Lutheran Church and perfectly suitable for setting up your sleeping gear. There is no charge. Port Clinton is small, only about 350 people, but is a very friendly little place. It sits on the side of Blue Mountain at Schuylkill Water Gap, and is bounded by the Schuylkill River on its lower, western end, and by the busy, PA64 thoroughfare on its upper, eastern side. This leaves room for one street, Penn Street, running parallel to PA64 and the river for a mile or so. The two streets are bisected by a series of streets about 50 yards long, so the town has a simple, ladder-type design.    The town's greatest feature is just across the iron bridge on the western side of the river, its railway station. The station is partly operational, and part museum. There are lots of sidings with various engines and cars, including Pullmans, of the Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern Railroad. Piles of sleepers and other detritus of a rail yard are there, although arranged in a peculiarly tidy, untidy way. The sleepers for example are neatly piled and look freshly creosoted. Nothing looks in need of a coat of paint. This region was about coal, and apart from its passenger service - the "King Coal Express" with its Pullmans ran between Reading and Scranton - coal was the main business of the railroad. Huge chunks of anthracite line the drive-way up to the station, as do wrought iron pillars each supporting a trio of gas lights. Buddleia in full bloom along the grass verges complete the scene. I like this place and would love to have spent more time here. How many places carry signs saying "This railroad is a wildlife sanctuary" (for birdlife)? But today we did a 15.2 mile slack-pack back to town from the Eckville Road north of here, thanks to the efforts of two lunatic, but amazingly helpful, past AT hikers here called "Bag of Tricks" and "Jester". We dragged our tired and sorry asses (I seem to be slipping into Americanese more often these days) back into town shortly before 8.00pm. The hotel bar blocked our path, so we went in and found that rooms are available tonight at a good rate and have taken them. A large and very tasty spaghetti dinner, a healthy flow of Yuengling's Premium lager, and a juke box full of Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash and other C & W favourites, have combined to put me in an uncommonly good mood. I almost feel like singing. In fact I think I will. "Stand by your man..."