Date: 2008-06-12
From: Stroudsburg, PA

To: Brooklyn, NY
Miles today: 205.5

If our starting location and destination look a little odd, forgive me, but we are experiencing some serious trail magic right now. Our friend Tupperware is from Stroudsburg, PA which is just a 10 minute drive from Delaware Water Gap and we have been slack-packing from his parents' house for the last four days. Woohoo! So even though we are sleeping in Pennsylvania, we have actually hiked the trail about 15 miles into New Jersey. Our next scheduled stop is my brother's house in Brooklyn. There's a couple of commuter train options we have that will take us into the city once we get into New York. Anyway, staying at Tupperware's parents' house is mind-blowingly awesome. They have set us up with dinner every night, a hot breakfast (and coffee!) every morning and sack lunches for our hikes! There is also enough ice cream and beer here to float a battleship. I think they will have a hard time getting us out of here. We've been here with The Treat, Twiggy and Spock, Hearts and of course, Tupperware. I didn't realize that it's been two weeks since we last entered anything. I got to get on this. We did get into Boiling Springs, which was a really cute trail town and set up camp in a guy's backyard. Unfortunately, it was my turn to have a blister get infected and we had to take a couple of days off for that to heal up. We got into Duncannon, home of the infamous Doyle Hotel, and met back up with our crew. For those of you unfamiliar with the Doyle, allow me to paint you a picture. The hotel was built by Anhauser Busch over a hundred years ago. There is a bar on the main floor and three stories of rooms above it. Each level shares a bathroom. Apparently Duncannon fell on hard times at some point and the bar at the Doyle became a wrestling mat for local drunks. The new owners have tried to clean things up, and it seems to have worked as far at the bar is concerned, but you still want to wear your shoes in the shower, if you know what I mean. Good times were had by all though and we managed to get out of there and into Port Clinton in a few days. Unfortunately, we had quite the tent mishap along the trail between Duncannon and Port Clinton. One night while camping outside Port Clinton, we decided it would be a good idea to put our food up on a bear line and a good branch was hard to find. Brent spotted one...right above our tent. Rather than doing the intelligent thing and moving our tent to set the line, I just stayed inside it and read a romance novel. Well, you can imagine what happens next. Brent has a wild toss and the rock tied to the end of the line comes crashing through the rain fly and leaving a big gaping hole in it's wake. Luckily it didn't rain that night, but it did leave our tent pretty far from waterproof. (On a side note, we LOVE our tent. I mean LOVE IT. We get made fun of by our fellow hikers because we're so obsessed with it.) So this rock incident was a big blow, literally and figuratively. But the trail works in mysterious ways and we found our way to the largest tourist attraction in Pennsylvania a couple of days later. And what is that tourist attraction you ask yourself? The Cabela's Superstore in Hamburg PA! We mosey on in there with our broke-ass tent and they happen to have the 2008 model just waiting to go home with us. Brent used his boyish charms and classic good looks on the customer service gal and before you know it, we're packing up our brand-new, completely intact tent for the grand total of NADA! The smiles on our faces must have been enough to overwhelm the smells under our armpits because we were offered a ride to the grocery store on our way out by a 82 year old professor named Charles. How he knew we needed the grocery store, we'll never know, but he drove us down there, waited on us to shop and drove us all the way back to Port Clinton. We reunited once again with some friends and all made plans to hike out the next day. The next morning comes and goes, and we have all yet to strap on our boots. Plans began to hatch and before you know it, there are eight of us standing on the side of the highway with our thumbs out trying to get a ride to the Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville, PA before their last tour of the day. Miraculously, we all get rides within ten minutes and arrive at Yuengling with powerful thirsts. Just as we are walking into the gift shop, where the tours begin, we see a sign that says "Closed toed shoes ONLY. No sandals, flip flops or Crocs." OH NO! Every single last one of our motley crew had on the official evening shoe of the Appalachian Trail - Crocs. A kind brewery employee stepped in at this heartbreaking moment and gently led our solemn group into a back room, filled from floor to ceiling with brewery tour approved closed toe shoes for the taking (or rather, temporary taking). So we made it to the tour, got our two free beers, and even managed to convince the tour leader that it would be a really good idea to take eight slightly tipsy hikers back to Port Clinton. We managed to FINALLY hike out of there, with a quick stopover at a forty-foot cliff jump, and made it to the slackpack marathon party which we are currently experiencing.I will put up our pictures of our very stylish brewery tour shoes and my heart-pounding cliff jump as soon as I can!