Date: 2005-07-04
From: Allentown hiking club shelter

To: "Jailhouse hostel" (Palmerton, PA)
Miles today: 17.7

The rocks just keep getting more and more fun! After an 8:30 start, we arrived to Bake Oven Knob, a mountain of rocks, around 1:30 in the afternoon. Lots of people were out for 4th of July and it amazed me how many of them carried heavy weight into the woods over 2 miles! Oh well, they looked like they were having a good time and that is all that matters I suppose. We would like to make an apology to Fig and Just Visiting who were apparently worried about us last night when we didn't arrive as planned. They seemed quite relieved to see us when at 9:30 we finally got to the shelter.We continued on to the shelter where there was absolutely no water anywhere close and the shelter itself was pretty dumpy! Bug and I were out of water though, and we had to make the trek. Correction, I offered to go get water since Bug usually does. It took me well over 30 minutes round trip to go down and get water. The spring was at least a half mile DOWNHILL, and when I arrived it was not flowing but a mud puddle. I sat and dipped water until the platypus was filled and just as I dipped one last time to fill the nalgene, a huge toad frog jumped right into the puddle I was dipping from. The good news is that we had water for the afternoon.The afternoon went by quickly as we hiked along with our friends, Fig & Just Visiting and Train & Raindrop. The blueberries and and black raspberries are all over the place and we stuffed ourselves silly! We figure we need the nutrition as much as the bears.We broke at George W. Outerbridge Shelter for a short break for hiking the .9 down to Lehigh Gap. We told everyone about the new collective name we have come up with for ourselves. Bug and Ms. Priss are now collevtively known as Team Tardy. This is because we are constantly getting up late and arriving into camp late. PA248 was a busy busy road and we weren't counting too heavily on getting a hitch into town. Amazingly though, a nice woman stopped to give the 4 of us (Train, Raindrop, Bug and I), a ride. Upon arriving in Palmerton, we went to register for the hostel at the Police station. Bug's conversation with the officer on duty went something like this:officer: Can I help you?Bug: Yeah, we wanted to spend the night in the "slammer."Officer: ...(long silence)Well, I guess the joke wasn't THAT funny, but we expected a little different reaction. I'm sure that a few of you are quite confused at this point....Palmerton police department has the Jailhouse hostel located in the borough hall. Although I would advise anyone who is wanted not to stay, because they proceeded to run checks on the two of us when we checked in.Bug and I had hoped to catch a nice fireworks display, but the town of Palmerton isn't all that large. So instead we ate Chinese (the only restaurant open) and each had a pint of ice cream. The local convenience store had fresh krispy kreme donuts and Train and Raindrop bought a dozen to split with us for breakfast in the morning.We are all showered and there is a full house tonight. In addition to the four of us; Hareball, MacGyver, Just Passin Thru, Colonel Mustard, Free, Fido, 2 section hikers, and Tenbears are here along with us. Tomorrow brings an early start for Bug and me as we desperatly need to do laundry and plan to be there first thing since we would like to hit Dante's Inferno as early as possible. Man, I can hardly wait until morning to tackle our 1/2 dozen Krispy Kremes...I guess I'll just dream about them. Nite!