Date: 2014-07-09
From: Eagles Nest Shelter

To: Port Clinton
Miles today: 9.0
Weather: light rain

AT day 87Today was our short day into Port Clinton. Jon's air pad had sprung a hole in the middle of the night, so he "night hiked" in to town before Kent and I woke up. We were joined in the shelter by one other person who was still sleeping when I got up so I had to pack very quietly. But I did my best and then Kent, Duke and I took off. We only had nine short miles in to real town food and some rest. Nine miles would normally go by pretty quickly but not in Pennsylvania. The rocks were terrible. There were toe stubbing, ankle twisting, leg breaking rocks for the majority of our day. It was grueling. Every time we reached the top of a hill or turned a corner we'd look for some non rock covered ground only to be faced with a huge boulder field or miles more of rock. To make matters worse, the trail was severely overgrown in places and the rain from the night before made everything slippery. Including the rocks. They were just waiting to jump up and trip us! So there we are trying to walk through a very narrow, wet, thorny, and rocky trail. No fun. I consider it a miracle that I didn't fall and break something! I escaped relatively unscathed, as a matter of fact, except for some cuts up my arm from the thorn bushes we had to walk through. The worse part may have been that the AT crossed a grassy road a few times only to bring us back onto more rocky trail. Every time we came back out to the road again I thought, "why couldn't we have just stayed on the road?". But that's the way it goes sometimes. Three and a half hours after we started we finally hit the descent into town! It wasn't super rocky! But it was steep. Very steep. I mean if it were any steeper we would have had to have ropes to clip into. So steep I couldn't even stop myself on the downward slide to take a picture. I seriously considered sliding down on my butt. If it weren't for the impetigo, I may have!We finally emerged on some railroad tracks! It was a beautiful train depot with some pretty cool looking trains. The grass was manicured and there was a river flowing just on the other side of the tracks. It was very pretty and right then I knew I'd like Poet Clinton!As we walked into town there was a sign hung on a telephone pole addressed to hikers. It explained where we could get food, resupply, do laundry and stay. It even have us an address of some Trail Angels whose garden hose we could use to get water and where we could charge our phones! We headed to the pavilion where we would stay and grabbed water on the way. The pavilion was huge but pretty dirty (as most things hikers use are) so we all camped in the field across the street. Jon had taken a bath in the river and told me it wasn't too bad, so that was my first order of business. It felt great to float in the water even though it wasn't clear. I was able to wash my hair too! As I was attempting to discreetly change from my wet hiker clothes into my sleep clothes, I hear kent yell down, "how long until you're ready?". We had to go to town to get out resupply a couple miles away and a trail angel was there with a car ready to go. I quickly threw my clothes on and got up to the car ASAP. Food is the number one priority of a hiker. We left Jon and Duke at the pavilion and rode into town with some other hikers. Walmart was overwhelming. When you're hungry and tired among choices is hard! We somehow managed to get what we needed and then set out to find a ride back to the hiker pavilion. Luckily, a nice man saw us walking with our bags and stopped to give us a ride. We found a place to do our laundry and went to check out the Peanut Shop while it was washing. That was a penny candy store that had every kind of candy you could imagine. We were literally kids in a candy shop! It was great! Once laundry was done, we hung out with some other hikers them went down to the social club at the firehouse for a bite to eat and a beer. It was a neat place! The people were friendly and the prices were right!On my way back to my tent I stopped at a trail angels house to soak my foot in Epsom salt to get some dirt out of my blister. She was so sweet and even sent me home with some ban aids and gauze to try to keep it clean!After a productive day and a great time in Port Clinton we all went to bed early!