Date: 2011-06-25
From: Eckville Shelter

To: Palmerton, PA
Miles today: 25.4

I got a terrible night of sleep because of the biting insects that were inside the shelter. The "no-see-ums" would not leave me alone. The worst part was that it was so hot, I couldn't cover up to protect myself. I don't remember waking up, or falling asleep the entire night. Horrible. I was so tired, yet could not sleep. I got out of bed at first light because of the bugs. Breakfast consisted of leftover pizza and I packed the rest for lunch. I was hiking at 6:30 am before anyone else set out. It was cool and cloudy which made the first hill climb out of the gap less painful. Going up the hill I met a southbound hiker who said that there may be some exciting trail magic up ahead for me. He informed me of a cookout with burgers and hot dogs just up ahead. I was hiking pretty early, so I'd probably be passing through before the event kicked off. Flowers (Buckeye) caught up with me rather quickly. He has a really wicked pace when he wants to, so this was no surprise. He wanted to see how fast he could really go one day, and managed to get five miles in one hour! No thanks... I followed closely behind Flowers for the rest of the day. This helped me pick up my pace a bit, and provided good banter throughout the whole day. The rocks are getting rockier... The bottoms of my feet are rather tender these days. The boulder fields are fine, actually they are rather enjoyable at times. It's the small, sharp, angular crap rocks that make it tiresome. Flowers is also a climber, so it made sense to let him find the best lines to ascend the larger scale rock climbs. We happened upon the trail magic area just after 9:00 am. Miraculously, the chaps at the trail magic immediatedly fired up their grill and slapped on a pile of burgers and hot dogs. The food was ace. I annihilated two burgers, and two hot dogs, and two mountain dews. On to the next one... We blazed past most of the shelters without stopping. Despite the rocky terrain, we still sorted out the miles. We stopped for lunch on a sweet rocky out crop called bear rocks. The next view was also worth stopping at: bake oven overlook. This was the first day that the wild blueberries were worth picking. We grabbed a few handfuls before the bears ate them all, very nice. We arrived at the George Washington Shelter in the early afternoon and decided to push into town since there was a free hostel run by the police force. At the road we managed to catch a ride in about two minutes. We had to check in with the local police before going to the hostel. They would get our ID information so they would have it in case there was a problem at the hostel I suppose. Unfortunately, the cop shop was closed for the day and we had no proper instruction of what to do. I finally saw a cop car on the main street which I flagged down. He seemed used to my strange request, and wrote down our information. The hostel was nicknamed the "jailhouse" probably because the cops have to let you in and out. It was in the basement of the local community center. Once inside, we had almost full access to the whole building. The showers were nice, bathrooms were clean, bunks were fair. Comfortably Numb, Wisconsin and Saturday were already there. Flowers and I wandered across to the local hotel for dinner. We were told that they had good chicken wings, which was the case. We had a couple of drinks and retired back to the "jailhouse".