Date: 2004-09-29
From: Caledonia State Park

To: Old Forge Road
Miles today: 9.8

Today is Wednesday September 29th, we left the motel and Gettysburg at 8:40, and took some back road, since we have our new detail map. Finally found a place to park the car on Old Forge Road at the Appalachian Trail, about three miles from the South Mountain restoration area. Found the trail, park the car, came back around to Caledonia State Park which is right at the intersection of 30 and 233. In a big parking lot at Caledonia Furnace, park the car, get out. Thought we'd seen a white Blaze on Highway 30. So we started walking down toward it. We had to walk a half a mile to get to the trail Crossing. We give up, we decide to turn around and go back to our car, and find the trail first. We go to the park office, where we paid two nights ago. Terry talks to the Ranger and I look at Maps we already have of the area, we were able to find the trail from the map. When we had first started walking on Highway 30 it was 10 a.m, but now its 10:40AM, when we start the trail. We're only on the trail for two minutes when we cross the creek, but it was easy with a couple of neat Bridges and then a bigger Creek and then finally you go up and over US 30. We start a gradual climb and the trail becomes more waterlogged with all the recent rain water. We do Trail maintenance, whenever we think we can get water off the trail. We do some water Trail maintenance about a half a dozen times, even though it slows us down, and we have no tools. All we have is our feet and our hiking poles. We are just clearing debris from the existing water bars. After a while Cindy says,"Pennsylvania is not all rocky, like we had heard. They have their share of mud" But then we do find the Pennsylvania rocks, and they make you walk thru piles of rocks, and we're trying to figure out when the shelter is coming.  At 12:40 there is a lookout that says restoration area, you see a big building with a steeple roof, we had seen it earlier, driving by. We had lunch there and I gave Dad a call. We passed a couple and they were having their lunch at that look out . At 1:00pm we were back on the trail again. Right after lunch we saw a sign for the shelter, but it was three tenths off the trail, we didn't go. We continued on, it was fairly rocky, kind of level. Finally after a while it came down to a road. We think it might have been Road 145 but we didn't recognize it. Crossed it and went just a short way and came to another dirt path, it's 1:53pm . At the five mile mark we come out to another sign at gravel road. We screwed up, Cindy led us across the road into a swamp, there's no Blaze on the path she's following. At the Gravel Road we find the real Trail, there's a double Blaze and the trail goes down the Gravel Road, but Cindy was daydreaming. Got back on the trail, off the gravel road and up a hill, where we rested. We also crossed another dirt road and another gravel Road. There was a sign on one of the roads that said that you could go to the South Mountain Post Office and grocery store from there. Went back in the woods and went back up, kept going and finally came to a register, and we signed in. We crossed a large opening where a gas pipeline went through. We came to a side Trail to Chimney Rocks. At 4 p.m. we took the side Trail to get the views from chimney rocks. We can see areas of lumbering in the distance. Can't actually see any roads from the viewpoint, and we read in the book that we have one point six miles to go, and down 900 ft. We went down the trail and finally came to Tumbling Run shelter.  There's two shelters there, one for snoring, we saw the couple we met earlier getting ready to spend the night there . They are thru-hiking and started July 1st. They hope to be done in December, their names are Kodak ( girl) and the Jolly Rancher. From there is a very short time to reach our car, about 5:19pm . Got in the car, took a neat gravel road back to our car, came to Snowy Mountain Road ,and we came down to our car. Going to camp at Caledonia State Park tonight .