Date: 2007-10-09
From: Leroy A Smith Shelter

To: Palmerton
Miles today: 15.5

mi. 15.5sleep hosteldest. Palmerton day 89 Well slep bad once again last night. I was just feeling lazy and didn't want to mess with my hammock. I should have though. My pad still leaks and Torque still snores. Tonight will be in a hostel, but tomorrow will be a hammock night. Originally the plan was to get up early and get an early start. I thought about it, but it was still dark out after 6am. So I got up a little later. I was still hiking before 8am. I still want to shoot for 7am on my next trail night. The hiking today was once again not bad at all. Another ridge line walk. In the middle it dropped down into a small gap and went back up, but even that wasn't too bad. It felt great to once again get 10 miles in by noon. The trail after the gap got really interesting. It resembled the whites but with a touch of a low lake bed. It was the site of old Zinc mining. I think it was surfaced mined somehow. The trail followed an old gravel road bed along the ridge for a few miles. Easy walking. Great views since there wasn't many trees. The ones that were there were either small or dead. There was a lof of dead dried out parts of trees laying around. Really erie, but cool none the less. Definitly not a place to hang a hammock. There were a couple spots but not much. Good thing I stocked up on water this morning. I only passed one side trail to a spring early on. It was .6 miles down. Not something I wanted to go to unless I had to. I got into town with just a little bit of water left. The trail down to the road at the gap was awesome. It dropped close to 1000 feet in around a mile or less. It has been forever since I did a major rock scramble. I almost forgot what light rock climbing with a pack felt like. Really though, it was fun hiking/climbing. For the first time since once in NY and probibly NH before that, I had to throw down my poles and climb down something. Good stuff. When we go to the road we knew it was going to be another adventure in hitch hiking. We walked down a little bit towards a stop light. We tried for a couple minutes, but no go. It was hard to see us coming around a corner. So we walked back up the road to another light at an intersection. This was a busy road a couple miles from town. We try hitching yet again. A minute or so later a car getting ready to turn asks us where we are going. I yell Polmerton. He yells to hurry up and get in. We run across the street and get into his car. Making the cars behind wait for a couple seconds after the light changed. He turned out to be a cool guy in his 20's. Yet again someone who mentons prison in passing talking about a book on hiking he read. Nice guy though. He said he used to hitch hike and follow the greatful dead around. He was cool. He offered us a smoke, but we don't do that. H drove u into town and dropped u off a the post office. He kept offering u different things. He even said h would pass along any extra cash i he had any. Like I said cool guy.                                       At the Post office I picked up my new steri-pen and sent back my old one. It looked refurbed, but it's all the same to me as long as it works. We then headed to the hostel. It isn't a hostel per say. More of the town lets hikers stay in the basement of there municipal building. We walk up give them our info and they give us a little goodie bag and someone shows us around. After a good shower I headed off to the library. My plan was to maybe do a little bit online and maybe get a new book to read. Torque was already there having showered first. All the PC's were taken, but I lucked out. They were having a used book sale. It looked to be an ongoing thing in the basement. I searched around for awhile and came up with the prefect book. Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi". The prefect book because I am keep thinking about the next big trip being a river trip. And I had wanted to read some Mark Twain after Catz suggested a couple of his books back in VT. I went to pay and the lady at the counter said there is no charge for hikers. It was only 25 cents, but it was nice of them to do that. It is more of the thought of them helping out hikers coming thru. I lucked out too since I just got to the library 15 minutes before they close. After that it was diner. We hit up the local dinner. It hit the spot. Regaurdless of what Torque says, I say parts of PA are in the south. He is from Tenn. Everyone moves really slow here. It isn't all bad. Only when you are hungry. After that I hit up the ATM. I checked my budget situation. After my withdrawel I am about half way though my budget. Not bad considering I budget a new pack, a steri-pen, a pricey hotel night, and 2 pairs of shoes I sent home. I am about half way done time wise, so it should work out in the end. If not I'll figure something out. Which should read credit card. One thing I recommend if you are going to be doing a hike is to get a credit card with no interest on new purchases for a set time. I lucked out and got one with no interest on new purchases for a year. I waited until just before I left to apply and did not activate it until Sept. So if I should have to put something on it, I won't have any interest for awhile and should be able to pay it off. Anyways. After diner it was a haircut. Don't worry it wasn't a full on haircut, more of a trim. I needed to trim the split ends. They were continually geting tangled and hard to comb or deal with. I told the woman at the barber shop I what I wanted and that I was growing it out. Only around half a inch off. I think she ended up taking close to a inch or more though. A little setback on growing it out. It is probibly just a little more than needed. It was pretty bad on the ends. I did talk Torque into getting his buzzed. He was on the edge. While we were in there and eating diner earlier it started to rain. Good to see some rain in places that needed it. I'm glad not to be on the ridge in the lightning hiking in it. We headed back to the hostel, or basement after that. I wanted to wait until after the rain stopped to resupply.