Date: 2014-06-05
From: The Doyle Hotel

To: Spring Before PA 325
Miles today: 17.4

Well-rested and dry from our stay at the Doyle, we awoke to kinda cloudy overcast weather and chances of rain until 9 am. So we waited around the hotel and ate at Goodies across the street - a great breakfast place with huge pancakes!We left the hotel and walked through town out to the main road. Through town we saw that Duncannon is a dying town - sad to see it but there is not much there to bring in lots of cash inflow.WARNING: THIS NEXT SECTION IS VERY ROCKY AND STEEPClimbing up to the Clark's Ferry Shelter made me think that the warning about a very rocky section of trail was placed in the wrong section of the book - that climb up and the first part of the ridge were much more rocky than the little section into Duncannon! Taking it slow up the hill after our long day yesterday we refilled water at the shelter and ran into Chops and Chocolate and Cheese at the shelter as well - Mission was blazing fast out of town today! Also ran into Tofer and his dog Al - out for three days hiking in Pennsylvania.After the shelter the terrain was much nicer and flat - still a little rocky but not nearly as much as earlier! We were heading towards a road overpass when we ran into a SOBO hiker who offered us snacks - apparently a trail angel left snacks and drinks out on the trail but the trailmaster for the section was taking it away since that person left it unattended. The idea is that leaving it their like that is almost like littering. We hurried over to the Cooper's and enjoyed some refreshing sodas and snacks - a little bit of food to hold us over till lunch!THIS ENDS THE ROCKY SECTION OF THIS JOURNALFrom the trail magic we walked a little farther to have lunch with a view at Table Rock - not an amazingly spectacular view but a pretty view to enjoy with lunch. The Swiss stopped by for a little while we were eating and then moved on.Stopped by the Peter's Mountain Shelter for a break. This was our original stopping point but we both felt good and it was early so we walked on with Chocolate and Cheese. We continued to follow the ridge for a long time and finally we dropped down into the valley where a spring was supposed to be. We heard that there was camping near the spring so we knew we would have a space to stay.Finally arrived at the spring and set up - a nice water source and some nice camping areas. Mission was MIA with Reset so they must have stayed a little further up the trail. As the evening progressed the camps got more and more crowded - most of the thru-hikers did not want to stop at 11 ish miles today! Chocolate and Cheese arrived and set up near us while we were gathering wood and cooking. Later on Sole Power arrived with a large group including Key Lime Critter Kristo Shivers and one or two others. Kristo moved up ahead but everyone else stayed at the other camp - Sole Power stayed with us.We got a nice fire going and two more souls showed up as it was getting dark - Wrong Leg and Half Moon. Wrong Leg is from the UK (you can tell by the accent) and he seems to be about my age. He was hiking with Half Moon who is from Maine going to Montana State and she starts school August 20th - she has a hard deadline to finish as well! Great talking with everyone and enjoying the fire - the spring camping area was well-utilized tonight!