Date: 2018-07-12
From: Duncannon, PA

To: Peters Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 11.0
Weather: scattered clouds

This morning I woke up to the fan blowing cold air in my face in The Doyle. It stayed pretty cold though the night even without A/C. No bugs ran across me and it was pretty quiet. I got up and sorted the food in my pack. I needed to resupply and do laundry since I didn't want to do anything the night before. I figured I needed 4 days of food since the next decent town was about 70 miles away. I packed my bag then headed over to the laundry mat first. It was great to have clean clothes again. I then stopped my a restaurant called Goodies for breakfast. I saw Lupin and her friend who I met at The Doyle the night before. They mentioned that the post office had a really good hiker box. I ate a breakfast sandwich and home fries. It was way better than oatmeal. I hoofed it over to the post office since they closed at 11 am for lunch. The hiker box at the post office was loaded with protein bars, dinners, and other resupply stuff. The protein bars alone were gold since they're usually 2 bucks a pop. I stashed 10 of them. I headed across town to the convenience store where everything was triple the price. I just got bagels and Gatorade there. Before heading out I went to The Doyle to have a drink.  Vicky was working the bar at The Doyle. She had owned it for 17 years and wondered why she got in the business in the first place. She was always joking around with the hikers but mentioned that they should keep in line unless they wanted to meet Queen Bitch. I ordered a pint of Yuengling and hung out. I asked her why you could see through the floor to the next bathroom. Apparently hikers kept flooding the floors in the bathroom and the ceiling tiles would fall out from the floor below. She didn't want to keep replacing them. Rocky rolled into The Doyle. Vicky checked his ID and she affectionately called him a puppy since he was only 19. In her hotel register she had a space called "Pup" and marked Rocky's with an X. It was getting later in the day and I decided to head out. I wanted to do 15 miles but it might be less with me starting at 1 pm.I walked for 2 miles on road through the town, by highways, and over two massive rivers. The real hard part was just about to begin. The start was a 600 foot climb up rocks. I was already feeling tired by this point and kept yawning. Maybe I spent too much time in town but still needed to pull through. I got up to the ridgeline then was greeted with about a quarter mile of rocks. My rock hopping skills are not advanced yet so I slowly made my way across them. After about 2 miles, I came to the first shelter and grabbed some water. Grey Goose an older woman who I met in Cumberland valley was taking a break there. She was taking on this part of the trail like a champ.  I got water then headed on. The trail eased out until the next shelter. I was still going slow because my toes had a few blisters from the day before. I arrived at the Peters Mountain shelter around 8 pm.  A few hikers were in the shelter already. They said the water source was a steep descent with 300 rock steps. I wasn't looking forward to that. As I was setting up my tent a woman named Quetzal showed up. She was from Mexico City and had started hiking the trail on May 23rd. She was at the same point I was and started two months later. She had already hiked the Hayduke which is an 800 mile trail in Utah. Then jumped on the AT to thru hike the whole thing. She hiked the PCT the previous year and showed me some intense pictures of hiking through snow in the sierras. I was amazed how much miles she covered in such a short time. My feet would fall apart if I did that many miles. She had built the website http://www.zelzinaketzalli.com to record her feats. I believe she's on to do the CDT next. We talked until 10 pm then I called it a night.Tonight I'm staring at the stars.