Date: 2009-07-23
From: William Penn Shelter

To: Eagle's Nest Shelter
Miles today: 19.2
Weather: overcast clouds

In the morning, I stayed in the shelter to finish up the audiobook, ¢Into Thin Air¢. I was exhausted from the night before, but I wanted to finish up the book before actually setting off. What was a bit ironic was that I found a real paperback book of ¢The Kite Runner¢ in the shelter, which I had just finished the previous day. I quickly hiked on to 501 Shelter, where I saw Macaroni on his way out. He told me that everyone was just ahead (Dah Wah He, Willow, Jungli), as they stayed behind to eat pizza that was delivered to the shelter the night before. Ahh, that would have been so nice to eat fresh oven pizza. Next time. I still made a stop at the shelter, as it was entirely enclosed with a solar shower and a water spigot off to the side. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy sometimes has caretakers for houses that are adjacent to a nice shelter or hostel. I approached a guy outside of the house, who I presumed to be the caretaker, and asked him where I could get some water. He had been using a hose that was attached to a spigot and immediately shouted to me, ¢I can¢t talk to you. I¢m not the caretaker.¢ I was a bit puzzled by this encounter, so I pressed him for more information, as I needed water. He followed up with roughly the same dialogue, at which time I grew impatient and noticed some water coming out of a hole in his hose. So, I put my water bottle up against it and started filling up my bottles. I think he grew angry and shouted, ¢Hey!!!¢ and then proceeded to point in the direction of the solar shower. Finally, I interpreted his pointing to mean that there was a spigot attached to the shower, which it turns out there was. Thanks, buddy, all you have to do is to tell me in the first place!As I pushed on, the rain came down in buckets. Despite having put on my rain jacket and rain pack cover, my belongings had become completely soaked. En route to the shelter, I saw Archie, an older guy from New Jersey and met Ramble On. At one point, I came across a gravestone, which marked Fort Dietrich Snyder, a lookout fort that was used during the very bloody and largely overlooked French and Indian War. The gravestone was dated 1755 and established by the Historical Society of Berks County. I was back in my home county! The great thing about the AT is that it takes you through many of these historical places where you can truly get an understanding as to the ¢texture¢ of these wars ¢ something that you cannot receive from reading a history text book. I¢m literally ¢walking through history¢!The rocks were really picking up again and my feet were suffering horribly. As a matter of fact, although I had been wearing my new Keen Voyageur shoes for three days, the entire sole of the shoe had separated from the leather. Therefore, with each step that I took, the leather would step on to the rubber sole, which would then hit the ground. It was a bit uncomfortable and was not offering my feet any support. As I crossed PA 183, there was a sign that read, ¢Pennsylvania apologizes for all the friggin¢ rocks!!!¢ It then had several pictures of shoes that had been massacred as a result of the tough terrain. The rain came down yet again, just dumping buckets of water on me. The trail turned into a four inch river, just sitting there on the trail. I don¢t think that I could have been more saturated with water. When I arrived at the shelter, Dah Wah He, Jungli, Macaroni, a section-hiker CD, and day hikers Tom and Colin were already in there. As I unpacked my belongings, I realized that everything had been soaked, as water ran through the back panel. My biggest concern was that my sleeping bag was completely saturated and I had nothing that would keep me warm that evening. We knew that it would be cooling down and, without having a sleeping bag, I was risking hypothermia. At the time, I was wearing one pair of wet shorts, no socks or shoes, and a damp short-sleeve shirt. Everything else was wet. Fortunately, I received a flannel shirt from Dreamcatcher, despite her being roughly half my size, a lightweight wisp pullover jacket and cargo pants from CD, and goretex tops and bottoms from Macaroni. Additionally, I put on my stuff sack for my sleeping bag and my sleeping pad on both of my feet. I looked very HOMELESS, but at least I was not freezing. The temperatures continued to drop and, as I had nothing to put over top of me to keep the warmth in, I shivered my way throughout the night. It was freezing, but I can¢t even imagine how it would have been if my friend thru-hikers hadn¢t helped me out. I would have been in some big, big trouble.