Date: 2016-05-14
From: 501 Shelter

To: Port Clinton, PA
Miles today: 0.0

The magical 501 Shelter, where pizza gets delivered, has a tin roof. The night's rain, in conjunction with the thunderous snoring of my bunk mates, made for a noisy night. The amplified rain also made everyone much more reluctant to get going the next morning. A few of the NOBO bubble took off early to knock out all 25 miles to Port Clinton. The rest of the bubble, hereby known on this blog as the Puppies, on account of their being young pups, made grand plans to not start hiking til after the rain stopped at 4 pm and to just night hike into Port Clinton.I was 15 miles away from the next shelter, so there I went, through infuriating drizzle that got heavier every time I took off my raincoat. We had received dire warnings that the rocks got bad after 501, and they were infuriating. PA is just littered with pokey bits of rock, mostly just big enough to be annoying and cause you to twist an ankle, but not big enough for you to really notice them unless you stare at the trail the whole time. So, that's what I did. A few times, I stopped to eat a leftover slice of pizza, standing in the middle of the trail with pack and rain gear on, since everything was dripping. I got to the shelter at 3, found Roller already there along with Survivor, an older hiker I'd been gradually catching up to for weeks. Survivor is just that, a survivor of lymphoma, and he's hiking to raise money and awareness for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He had just taken a nasty fall face first into a boulder, so he was hiking with two black eyes and a massive knot in the middle of his forehead. Thankfully, he hadn't been seriously injured and he was back on the trail after a few days recuperating in a nearby hostel. The sun came out right after we stopped, so I spent a great afternoon soaking my feet in an icy creek and reading. A pair of guys from Jersey rolled in, we all cooked dinner and chatted. It was a feast, because everyone would be resupplying in Port Clinton the next morning and could therefore eat everything left in their food bags. I hammocked outside the shelter and, as we pretty much expected, the Puppies rolled in around midnight, too tired to make it all the way to town. As they explained the next morning, they ended up staying at 501 until 6 pm playing a contentious game of Risk... Probably not the best thought out plan, in retrospect.I was hiking about 50 yards behind Roller that morning when she stopped suddenly and turned back to me. She's super soft-spoken, so it wasn't until I was caught up that I discovered the cause of the delay. Roller always teases me for not noticing snakes, because she sees like five of them a day. I argue that, because she always hikes about ten minutes ahead of me, she is either making up these snakes or scaring them all away before I get to them. With that in mind, at first I didn't believe that the bush in front of us rattled at her.But then I saw it, a writhing, shiny black pile of snake, with two angry sets of eyes glaring at us. "Oh, f*ck! Wait...They don't look like rattlesnakes.""They rattled, though.""Are you sure?"Roller just glared at me, then said to the snake "Hello, we're your friends. I am going to take a picture of you, though." The snake just tasted the air and stared some more."Alright, well, they don't seem to care we're here. Maybe we'll be okay." I said with bravado, as I banged my trekking poles against the ground, hoping to scare off the possibly-rattle snakes. They just glared back, unmoved.Halfway convinced, Roller took a hesitant step forward and the furious rattling began. She jumped back, the rattling stopped."F*ck, okay, definitely rattling. I say we run.""In which direction?"We stared at the snakes, they stared back. After a few minutes, clearly bored, the first rattler uncoiled herself slowly and slid out onto the trail. Easily six feet long, and very Voldemort-y, she eyed us once more, then slipped into the woods on the other side of the trail. Her snake pal watched her go for a minute, then followed. The two glided in tandem sufficiently far away."Jesus, that was gross," I said, as we started hiking again.The descent into Port Clinton was absurd. Just a straight shot down to the river, 1000 feet in half a mile. None of those fancy switchbacks or well built stone steps, just a root and rock riddled slope of death. Northern PA trail maintainers seem to delight in making their trails borderline impassible.Luckily, even Roller's bad knee survived the descent and we found ourselves in town. Port Clinton is desperate and decrepit, much like Duncannon, but a local church maintains a pavilion and park for hikers to camp in and a trail angel lets us use the spigot outside their house, so it's as good a place as any to take a day off. We ran into KT outside one of Port Clinton's three operating businesses, the Peanut Shop. She was eating pop rocks and planning to catch a hitch into Hamburg to resupply. The next stop was the Port Clinton Hotel, which reminded me of a less-charming version of The Doyle. They are famed for their cheesesteaks, packed with 16 ounces of meat. Roller and I skipped those, but did eat a tolerable lunch. We then dropped our gear at the Pavilion where the Puppies were again playing Risk, and decided to hitch to Hamburg.I've never hitch hiked before, and I gotta say, it's not my preferred method of transportation. We got picked up fast enough, since it was raining and we were girls, and all. The young couple was happy to drop us at the Hamburg Super Walmart, packed to the gills on a Saturday afternoon. We were momentarily stunned by the dizzying array of options and Roller was baffled by the size of the carts, but we quickly filled one with mangoes, kale, fresh bread, and cheese. I counted 40 different poptart flavors, then got so overwhelmed that I bought granola instead . After an hour, we were happy to leave. The checkout lady was shocked to learn we were hikers, claiming that most hikers just buy candy and smell much worse than us. Laden with an impractical quantity of food, our next stop was the (world's largest) Cabellas. We both needed gaiters and canister fuel. But first, we had to trek across the concrete wasteland that is suburban America. It was a solid mile, though it only looked like a block or two on the map, through not-pedestrian friendly parking lots and busy roads. Roller said finally, as we passed a Five Guys and and Army Surplus store, "now I really feel like I'm in America."Oh, but wait, because that Cabellas was a genuine feast of every negative American stereotype imaginable. Make America Great Again hats and t-shirts with logos like "Confederate Lives Matter" (sidebar: eff that guy, seriously, what an arse). There were guns and Amish people and fat children eating beef jerky. The whole place was completely ludicrous. Unsurprisingly, their backpacking equipment was relegated to a back corner. We found canister fuel, but nothing else we really needed and decided to split. As we waited in line, we marveled at the guns and guns and eagle tshirts and speculated about what American patriotism would look like if the Turkey had become our national bird. Now carrying a silly amount of weight in flimsy plastic bags and facing a hideous thunderstorm rolling in over the mountains, we attempted to hitch again. I think all the plastic bags of loot made us either sketchier or less pitiable, because it took a lot longer to get a ride back. Eventually a middle aged lady in a BMW stopped and ferried us the two miles to the pavilion.The Puppies were at dinner when we got back, but the pavilion had quite a few newcomers, including the pair from Jersey we met the day before. They had spent the afternoon throwing back $2 Yuengling at the Port Clinton hotel and were already in their hammocks. Odysseus was reading, Survivor and another older hiker were in their sleeping bags. Roller and I gathered our laundry, cobbled together some real fancy outfits from the box of donations in the corner. My options were a sequined paisley muumuu or cropped maternity sweatpants printed to look like denim. I went with the latter. We went to the hotel, paid $7 each, and took the world's worst showers- excruciatingly hot, then ice cold, with zero control over which you might get. The panels of the shower walls were all collapsing inward and I was afraid to touch anything, but it was my first indoor shower (501 had an outdoor "solar" shower that was actually a hose with well water, not that I'm complaining) in a week, so I coped. Afterward, we did laundry in what I suspect was once a root cellar and charged our phones in the almost empty bar, drinking, I'm not kidding here, Franzia, their house wine.When we got back to the pavilion, everyone was fast asleep, so I shimmied into my bag and passed out.The next morning was dreary and cold, but Roller made scrambled eggs and we had fresh fruit, so we enjoyed a long breakfast. The Puppies went to Hamburg to play with guns at Cabellas, Most of the others hit the trail. KT turned up around noon, having stayed with a trail angel the night before (she has a knack for getting free room and board) and decided to take another zero.I spent the afternoon nursing a glass of something claiming to be wine and reading a Pennsylvania newspaper while my phone charged in the hotel, then joined KT and Roller for an evening of sitting quietly in the shelter, glaring at the rain from our sleeping bags. It was getting down to the 30s that night (as Roller says "what does that mean in real degrees?") which we were less than thrilled about. Late in the evening, we were joined by another hiker, Carbo, who I'm fond of because he shares coffee.We settled in for a chilly night and an early morning.