Date: 2015-06-20
From: Campsite 1212.9

To: Hamburg 
Miles today: 4.9

We woke at 5:30 to the sound of rain. Yes, rain again. We went back to sleep saying a prayer the rain would stop. We woke later, much later, at 7:00. We have never slept in this late. It was raining but just a bit. We quickly ate breakfast, packed up as much as we could inside the tent, dried off the tent the best we could and were hiking by 7:36! We are certainly efficient in hitting the trail.   By the time we started hiking, the rain had stopped. Thankfully, we didn't need to wear our ponchos. We did use our pack covers as we knew the wind would blow the trees causing water drops to fall. Good thing we did as the wind did blow and the water drops did fall. The trail was flat and had the "normal" rocks of Pennsylvania with edges pointing uowards. We walked on the ridgeline the next few miles and had a few nice view points. Then we started our 900 foot descent into Port Clinton. The first part of the downhill wasn't too bad. We stopped for a water break and to check how much further we had to go and while stopped, Goo Roo came by. We hadn't seen him since Pine Grove Furnace so it was good to catch up with him and see how his hike was going. He took off before us and was soon gone, out of site, probably already to Maine! He is much younger than us and he hikes much faster than us. The trail then became really steep for the last half of the descent.   Many times there were stone steps we went down. With the rain this morning, the steps were very slippery, extremely dangerous. We finally finished the downhill and crossed over several sets of railroad tracks. The tracks were for the Reading and Northern Railroad.   This area is home to the famous Reading Anthracite. The Anthracite was huge. Today's picture picture is from here.    We walked through the small town of Port Clinton and then along the Schuylkill River. It was a nice level, rockless trail. We hardly knew how to hike on such a trail. We went under PA Route 61 and came to another road. There was a parking area there and we saw 2 fisherman coming back to their cars. We asked if they minded giving us a ride to the hotel and the one said sure thing. Our trail angel for the day was Andy. Once again the Lord has provided what we have needed. Andy was super nice and told us about the highlights of the trail we would be seeing over the next week. Not sure if this was good news or bad news as he asked if we were afraid of heights. Hmm, Lavender is now even more concerned about the upcoming trail. Andy dropped us off at the hotel at 09:45 but we couldn't check in because no rooms were available. The lady at the front desk was super nice and allowed us to wait in the breakfast area. We had some tea and coffee. We took care of making out resupply list and cleaned out our packs a bit.. Our room was soon ready and we went through the typical scenario of setting up our wet tent and other gear to dry. Lavender's sister and brother-in-law drove up to see us. As always, it was great to see them. They brought us non-hiking clothes to wear. Oh, it felt good to wear them for a few hours.   We all we went over to the largest Cabelas store in the last world. What a place it is! It is huge and has everything imaginable for fishing, camping and hunting.   Then we had lunch at Logans Steak House. We next went to Walmart for resupply. We said sad good byes to Lavender's sister and husband. Now it is time to relax. Tomorrow we are back on the trail. Let's pray for a day of no rain.