Date: 2004-07-10
From: Cove Mountain Shelter

To: Peter's Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 15.4

8:30 pm. I love this time of day. The woods are pink with the setting sun. Everything is quiet. My tent is up and ready for me to crawl into. I¢ve put on dry clothes and hung up my sweaty shirt, shorts and socks on the limbs of a nearby tree to ¢air out¢ if not to actually dry out. I¢m nibbling on a couple of cheese and crackers, while I wait the requisite 8 to 9 minutes for my dehydrated chicken teriyaki with rice meal to reconstitute itself in its self-serve pouch. I have fetched my water (400 stone steps down to the spring and back up certainly gets one's attention after a long day of hiking!) and by the time I finish dinner the water will be fully treated and ready to drink.It¢s getting dark now and the fireflies are out. The light from some are so bright that they can be usually mistaken for a camper¢s headlamp coming up the trail. I can hear muffled voices coming from the shelter which is about 30 yards west of me and some others over my shoulder, from the other ¢tenters¢ scattered across the ridge. Unlike many shelter areas on the Trail, the terrain around this one is quite flat and relatively open which makes for good tenting. As perhaps you¢ve gathered form my previous entries, I prefer sleeping in my tent when it is not actually raining or likely to rain because it affords me excellent protection from mosquitoes and the ¢no-see-¢em¢s¢ not to mention it being less noisy, closer to nature and away from the scurrying shelter mice that have been known to give in hikers backpacks while their owners were asleep.Today was pretty laid back and very much a ¢take it as it comes¢ day for me. I was up and already enjoying breakfast by 6:30 but I decided to indulge my ¢ I¢m-definitely-not-a-morning- person¢ tendency by taking time to do some journaling, stretching and leisurely read through the shelter-log entries before even thinking about getting organized and on to the Trail. Consequently it was after 10 when I finally set foot on the path to the Northeast. By noon I was in downtown Duncannon, a dreary little river town about 15 miles west of Harrisburg, where I gorged myself on a Stromboli about the size of a large pizza! Nevertheless, there was none left when I waddled out the door to follow the Trail across the Susquehanna River via the Clark Bridge, across the railroad tracks and up Peter¢s Mountain. I stopped for a while (largely out of necessity to let my Stromboli digest) and realizing I had a surprisingly strong cell signal, used the time to submit my back journal entries, clear e-mails and transmitted pictures for my journal album. After that I just kept walking until I arrived at the Peter¢s Mountain Shelter at 7:30 p.m. Incidentally, Duncannon¢s is the home of the infamous Doyle Hotel-a dump of a place that sells cheap beer and has a few rooms for rents upstairs where reputedly, more than one hiker¢s dreams of a Thru Hike have come to an end after too many beers and too many nights of partying have taken their toll. I stuck my head in to see what it looked like while passing by.Dinner is now over and I have had my cookies, hung up ¢Miss Piggy¢, brushed my teeth and am ready to go to sleep. I¢m in my tent with my head on my pillow, my feet elevated slightly to help the circulation by having placed my empty pack under my sleeping pad (a little tip, provided by ¢Stumpknocker¢ the night back on Mt. Cammerer in NC)). It¢s dark and quiet and I¢m half asleep already. I love this time of the day. (Did I tell you that already?)