Date: 2015-06-12
From: 3 Points

To: PA-34
Miles today: 21.1
Weather: broken clouds

We had trail magic back to the trail again this morning.   Lavender's sister was our trail angel this morning along with one of her grandsons. She dropped us off at the trail head at 0700 and we were on our way. The trail was quite nice starting out today. Not many rocks and no steep ascents or descents.   Count was doing web duty this morning and the spiders must have been busy last night. It wasn't until we passed the first shelter that we didn't have web duty anymore. At 8:37, we came upon a sign for the official half way point. We had been anticipating this place for several days. It was a great feeling to know we have hiked half the trail. Now we have less miles to hike than what we already had hiked. Of course we took lots of pictures to capture the moment. The feeling of our accomplishment did not hit us immediately. It took a few steps of hiking before the reality hit. Then, there was a new spring in our steps!   We had been hiking for about 2 hours when we saw Trudge on the trail. We hiked with him for about 30 minutes and then we all took a much needed rest break. It was nice to be hiking with Trudge again. We always enjoyed our conversations with Trudge while we were hiking. Count had to tend to a blister that was forming. We were able to find some blister bandaid during our last resupply. A friend had told us about these. (Thank you Brenda.) Lavender had thought she developed shin splints yesterday as her right shin had been causing pain. As we sat for our break, she noticed a bruise on her right shin. The bruise must have come from those horrible rocks two days ago. Oh yeah, another reminder of those rocks. We were hiking fast today so Trudge stayed back and we motored on. We made it to Pine Grove Furnace at 1130 and found a bunch of familiar faces. We saw Outlier, Rock Boat, Lightning, Pork Chop, Goo Roo and Captain Planet. Several of them had already started on the half gallon challenge. The half gallon challenge is to eat a half gallon of ice cream in 30 minutes. Count decided to take the challenge but Lavender passed. Count started on his 48 oz of Cookies and Cream ice-cream. 48 oz of ice-cream is a lot of ice-cream. The strategy behind choosing Cookies and Cream was that there were bits of cookies not just all ice-cream to eat. It was also eaten in the sun to help keep him hot and the ice-cream to melt. Who knew there was a strategy to eating a half gallon of ice-cream? He took about 20 minutes to finish that and he was starting to feel really bloated but he had about other pint to eat. He picked raspberry for his last pint. He was having some trouble finishing up the pint but he finished it and won the challenge.   Now he just hoped he could keep it down. He doesn't even really like ice-cream. Now, he certainly won't like it.   Just before Count had finished the challenge, Lavender's niece and husband, Kristen and Aubrey, stopped by to give some trail magic and cheer Count on. We had a nice picnic with them and their two boys. It was really nice of them to stop by and visit with us. Count didn't eat any food but did take a wrap to eat later - after his stomach digested all that ice-cream. Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye and continue hiking.    We stopped by the AT museum for a bit and then we were on our way. The next few miles of trail were really nice. Mostly flat and rock free. We passed by Fuller Lake. We wanted to stop and enjoy the water but the trail was calling. We hiked on.   We should have stayed at the lake as we started a 500 foot climb. It was so hot, we were dredged with sweat. We hiked by a 5 foot long black snake slithering along the side of the trail. At the end of the climb, we walked the ridgeline for a few miles. We smelled a skunk as we passed one area. We were looking and looking and did not see it. We didn't want to see it, thankfully.      We started to hear some thunder when we only had about 2 miles to go for the day. We picked up our pace and said a quick prayer that we wouldn't get caught in the rain.   We had about 0.9 miles to go when we started to feel some rain drops. Now we were really moving. We did that 0.9 miles in just 14 minutes.   It was a nice sight to see Lavender's sister waiting for us at the PA34 road crossing. We finally relaxed once we were in the car. We are looking forward to our 2 zero days this weekend at Lavender's sister's home. Hopefully our bodies will be healed by the time we return to the trail on Monday.