Date: 2003-06-22
From: Lehigh Gap

To: Palmerton in Lehigh Gap
Miles today: 0.0

Sunday, June 22   A zero day. No miles. I watched the weather forecast from the hotel room overnight and listen to the locals and all that. It was supposed to rain harder on this day than the two previous days which had caused tremendous flooding all over the place. As we drove into Palmerton yesterday there were people¢s yards that were completely flooded. Water was going into some houses. Rivers had jumped their banks. Just a terrible thing and they were calling for another full day of rain for today¢¦on Sunday. I decided that I did not want to walk in the rain again and that I needed to do my laundry and stuff. So, I took another zero day off. A really good decision in the long run.   I got up very early. Got up about 6:00 and walked around town just to kind of see what was going on. Palmerton is the kind of town that nothing opens up on Sunday and certainly not early in the morning. Burt¢s actually did open up at 8:00 for breakfast but it was 6 o¢clock in the morning. The laundromat was open so I grabbed my laundry and took it down there. Draftrunner was doing her laundry as well. So we sat there and dried laundry and threw our boots in the dryer and sat there and watched them tumble around and around for about an hour or so. I ran down to the gas station while that was happening and she sat there and watched our clothes. I got coffee for myself and hot chocolate for her. I came back and finished the laundry¢¦got it all folded up and by that time Burt¢s was open. So, the two of us went and had breakfast. I got 3 eggs over light with toast and a breakfast ribeye..which is not the same size as the ribeye I had the previous night at the same place for dinner.   So, we¢re sitting there eating breakfast and I see this hiker walk out of the building across the street and start hiking toward the trail and I figured that must be the town hall. The trail companion says that the city allows you to sleep in the basement which I wasn¢t too keen on. That¢s the reason I stayed at the hotel. We figured we¢d go finish breakfast and go across the street and see what hikers are sitting there¢¦that were staying at the place. We did that. We finally found the entrance to the basement and it turned out to be a great place to stay. A big, huge basement. Plenty of bunks. Several rooms. One room with a big table. Seeing that it was going to be a zoo over there I decided to move over there and Draftrunner did the same thing. She checked out of the hotel as well. So, we went over and got situated there.   Actually, I went shopping first. Went around town first. I dumped my stuff off and then went back to the hotel and got the rest of it and dumped it all on the bunk. The one guy that was staying in the basement that I hadn¢t met yet but I¢d seen in the registers for a long time was Flatlander. Another Floridian. A guy from Orlando who had quite a reputation. He walks at all hours of the day and night. Wherever he gets tired on the trail he just drops on the trail and sleeps right on the trail or off to the side or whatever. He pulls his sleeping bag out¢¦his mattress or whatever and just goes to bed right there for a few hours until he gets back up. He¢s got no schedule whatsoever. He could walk in the middle of the night and sleep in the middle of the day or vise versa. He has no time schedule. He¢s been doing pretty big miles that way. Anyway, I spent a good part of the morning either going out shopping and getting stuff that I needed like candy bars, moleskin¢¦just various odd stuff. Doing either that or working on my pack which I want to do several things involved with all my gear. So I sat until darn close to 2 in the afternoon messing with that stuff. I ran across the street to the Chinese take out place and ordered pork lo mein which they gave me a huge dish of¢¦that and pork fried rice. The pork fried rice was excellent. The pork lo mein was ehhhh. It was ok. But the pork fried rice is some of the best I¢ve had. Basically, I just lazed around for most of the day. I worked on my boots. I waterproofed them. I used some Aqua Seal to try and seal a hole where the water had been pouring in. I did some other odd stuff and just sat there and watched it rain. And I sat and watched other hikers walk in. Mighty Mouse and her partner came in the afternoon. So did Red and his girlfriend. About 4 o¢clock I decided to run over to the Parkside Bar and sit there for a little bit. I had another long island ice tea and another Yeunling. Then I went back to the basement and Flatlander and I decided we were gonna go bowling. There was a little bowling alley in town. About 10 lanes worth of bowling. So he and I decided we were gonna go bowling and walked over there. We laughed our tails off. Bowling¢¦both of us did a horrible job. I think my best score was a 138 and then I got a 97. He did even worse than that but it was a lot of fun. So, we got done with that and went back to the basement and there was a total of about 8 hikers there by now. We sat and chatted for awhile. Then everyone kind of started crawling into bed and I decided I was gonna run over to the Parkside Inn again and have a couple of more beers before I went to bed. I sat there for awhile and talked to the owner. I found out the history of the Parkside Inn. He showed me some pictures from the 1890¢s when it was first built. The bar was about the same but there were no chairs or anything. Guys just stood up at the bar and directly under the bar was a running water trough so you could sit there and pee if you needed to without leaving the bar. I left there and went back to the basement at about 10:30 and all the lights were out and everyone was asleep. I grabbed my stuff off the bunk. I really didn¢t want to sleep with a bunch of people again and I went over to the furnace room which was much warmer and there was nobody in there. It was very roomy. I laid on the floor and zonked out. I had a real nice sleep.