Date: 2004-07-12
From: Ensign Cowall Shelter

To: Tumbling Run Shelter
Miles today: 17.7
Weather: moderate rain

Well, I¢m coming off of two zeros again, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it. On Saturday morning Cowgirl came and woke us up at the shelter at 7:30¢maybe an all-time record for us¢because Wonder Boy had said he¢d be at the road early. We ended up waiting for eight hours¢they showed up at three. They weren¢t a bad eight hours, though¢we had a blast, playing checkers and word games, eating food, talking to hikers. County and Pippin ended up playing stickball with rocks in the middle of the road. We were so bored. When the gang finally showed up, we were so excited it felt like a party the whole way up. We stopped in Duncannon to pick up C-legs, stopped at the Taco Bell for some seven-layer goodness, and it ended up taking us almost four hours to get there. It¢s amazing how far we¢re walking now without even realizing it.So even dinner was pretty much over¢but Baltimore Jack hooked us up with burgers, and there was leftover pasta salad and delicious bratwursts, as well as fantastic soup. So, the food ended up being good. But what was cooler was all the people we saw there that we hadn¢t seen in ages, whom I never expected to see again: Arms and Colleen (now Snacks), Beater and Wife, Chef TB, Gaia, K-Less, Mad Scientist, Pegasus, Sunshine, Yoda, and Loose Lucy. Everyone was there. It was so great¢it really made me feel like part of the hiker community again, something I had been missing.And it made me feel a lot less insecure about mileage, too. Almost all of those people had taken off time for one reason or another and we talked some about worrying about Katahdin, but most people had the same attitude that we do¢we¢ll get there when we get there. It¢s just tough to explain that to the folks back home. But seeing everyone was definitely worth the two zeros, especially because most of them aren¢t that far ahead. K-Less is only in Duncannon, and he was getting ready to take three or four more zeros with some friends of his from Florida, so we might actually catch him. We all had a great time sitting up by the fire and talking. There were four guitars circulating at one point and tons of people played music. We didn¢t go to sleep till dawn, and there were still people up playing music then.The morning was hard to take. The breakfast was a little disappointing or just under-funded¢a half pancake, some bacon, and muffins really don¢t cut it for thru-hikers. Bonzo wanted to take off early, so we left before anyone else. But we wanted to stop at these cliffs overlooking a river on the trail near Port Clinton. So we did on the way out. A lot of the guys jumped off the cliffs¢I chickened out. When we got back to Wonder Boy¢s car, though, it wouldn¢t start. C-legs had set off the alarm by mistake and Wonder Boy¢s key had broken off in the ignition earlier and would no longer work to turn it off. County and I had intended to hike, but we ended up waiting around most of the day with the car. County ended up using his AAA card to get a tow truck and Wonder Boy had it towed to a Toyota dealer and stayed in Port Clinton to take care of it. So it was just Bonzo, County, and I in the van on the way back. He dropped us off a little before dark and we ended up camping in exactly the same spot we had left two nights before.No worries, though. We had leftover Wendy¢s hamburgers for dinner and met this other couple who came in late, Flint and Mr. T. We hiked most of the day with them today. They helped us wake up early¢9:30, woo-woo! Which enabled us to do an almost eighteen-mile day. It rained most of the day, which inhibits stopping. We also crossed over the Pennsylvania state line today. Very exciting. It¢s also the Mason Dixon line, so I have officially walked out of the South. Tonight it¢s just the two of us at the shelter, which is weird, but cool. It¢s the first time that¢s happened to me since Vandevender with my mom. Maybe the trail is finally thinning out.Tomorrow we have to go into South Mountain to pick up the mail drop we forwarded, and we also heard that there¢s another hiker feed put on by a Methodist church ten miles down the trail, about which I¢m very excited. County is slightly less impressed. It won¢t do good things for our mileage, but if we weren¢t supposed to go to these things, we wouldn¢t find out about them. That¢s my theory.