Date: 2004-11-10
From: Earl Schaffer Shelter (by Peter's Mtn Shelter)

To: Doyle Hotel, Duncannon
Miles today: 11.4
Weather: scattered clouds

Tiny's water froze last night; temps in the 20s. I warmed up by descending a steep rocky path, 800 feet, to the spring and carrying four liters back up with me in my water bag.The hike to the next shelter cut along a broken rocky ridge, then descended into a sunlit grove of bare oak trees and dry leaf-covered ground. With the trees bare, the view of the Susquehanna River cutting through the stone mountains on either side was spectacular. Add a castle here, a fortress there, and it could have been the Rhine River. No wonder so many Germans settled this area; it must have looked like home.From Clark's Ferry Shelter, the trail re-ascended (gratuitously, I thought) to a rocky promontory looking out over the river, gleaming in the fall afternoon sun, then cut back down the side of the ridge through more forest to the railroad bed and the highway bridges that crossed into Duncannon. The Doyle Hotel, at the far end of town, is legendary among thru-hikers for its hospitality (not to mention its price -- Birch and I are sharing a very comfortable, heated, double room for $12.50 apiece). The peeling wallpaper has been replaced with paint in the past year, and the new owners have started a thru-hiker yearbook (digital photos, arranged by date of hiker arrival, and cross-indexed by trail names), since most hikers find their way here -- over a thousand already this year. The hotel is an old Anheuser-Busch red brick boarding house with some of the tin ceilings intact, transoms over the doors, handsome woodwork up four flights of stairs -- it's a gem in need of TLC.\After a steaming hot bath, it was wonderful just to lie down on clean sheets for half an hour. I joined Birch, Tiny, and No Agenda for a 75-cent lager in the hotel bar -- the local brew, Yuengling, is the standard on-tap fare -- and then dinner at a nearby pub, which, like the Doyle, has a large "Hikers Welcome" sign over its doors. We got onto the subject of politics, during which Tiny patiently listened to my rantings, like a middle-school teacher attending to a hyperactive child hepped up on CocaCola and PopTarts, and challenged me to think further than my usual knee-jerkisms to support my opinions. It was a refreshing opportunity to debate with someone who, having been in the Marines for six years, had some first-hand experience of the U.S. military, but who was not necessarily a knee-jerk conservative. (Tiny, you'll make an excellent teacher!)Birch, a ringer for Ruth Gordon's character in "Harold and Maude" -- bubbly, colorful and full of a zest for life -- was unusually quiet throughout this discussion. No Agenda echoed Tiny's more conservative line from time to time, and shared with us his own passion for collecting guns, at one point pulling out of his wallet his indispensible NRA card.After another couple of lagers at the hotel bar, I couldn't keep my eyes open, so left the fellows to the pool table downstairs, with Seth (the hiker I met a week or so ago), who has spent the last four days at the Doyle (known by hikers as "the Vortex" for its capacity to suck hikers off the trail for long periods).Birch was upstairs, beginning to talk about leaving the trail for the rest of the year, the cold weather having got to her.Slept like the dead.