Date: 2008-05-21
From: Hostel Palmerton PA

To: Leroy A. Smith Shelter PA
Miles today: 15.8
Weather: few clouds

Day 94 ¢ Wednesday May 21 ¢ Leroy A. Smith Shelter PA ¢ Miles Today: 15.8 Total Miles: 1261.4Happy Birthday, Eddie It was an interesting night in our Palmerton jailhouse hostel. We had the whole Borough Hall to ourselves, which is really quite funny that they just turn over the Hall to complete strangers. They had our driver's license information so I guess we could not have gotten away with too much! We had a pretty sleepless evening until about 11:00. Brakeman is convinced it's because he ate about 75% of the cookie dough. Grasshopper's theory is that it's because it was 67 degrees and we're just not used to sleeping in such warm conditions. On top of the warmer temps were the sounds of traffic and sirens, as the police station was just a block away. We traded our nature noises for town noises and traded our evening mountain temps for controlled building temps. It was more than our bodies could adjust to in one night. It¢s better sleeping on the trail. At 11:00 last night when we couldn't sleep, we decided to go to the bathroom, which was located upstairs. Grasshopper found an aerosol can of odor neutralizer in her bathroom. Ah, just what we needed! She thoroughly sprayed our boots, socks and gortex gloves and by morning they smelled much better!   Just what we needed ¢ socks and shoes that now have a nice tangerine smell! I¢m sure the bears will love the smell too! Now if we could just get rid of the rain, we might be able to maintain the fresh aroma. We got up at our normal 6:00, freshened up and fetched our now dry items from the boiler room. Got to love those boiler rooms! Brakeman swept the floor in the hostel area to make sure we left it clean before we headed to the main street, Delaware Avenue, to attempt our hitch. We were afraid that the hitch might be a difficult one as folks were headed to work and would not want to take a detour for a hitchhiker. Quite a few cars passed us by, but within 5 minutes a gentleman in a pickup truck stopped and picked us up! He just finished his night shift at the zinc factory and on his way home. Very nice of him to pick us up and get us back to the trail. I¢m sure I would have thought that hitting the pillow after a night shift had a higher priority!We were hiking by 7:15 under a gray and foggy sky. Immediately we started our climb with a 12 -mile rock scramble. We tucked our hiking sticks away and scrambled up the hill. Luckily, we had no wet rocks and no rain coming down, which were things we were not looking forward to. We had heard quite a bit about this rock scramble and really wanted to do it in dry weather. It was a fun climb in our dry conditions.At the top of the big rock scramble was a ridge deforested due to zinc smelting operations from 1898-1980. Approximately 2,000 acres on Blue Mountain, which is adjacent to the former smelters, have been defoliated, leaving a barren mountain side. Soil on the defoliated area of the mountain has contaminated the rain water flowing across it. The runoff and erosion have carried contaminants into Aquashicola Creek and the Lehigh River. Efforts to restore the vegetation began in 1983. It has a tremendous long way to go, despite the restoration efforts of the past 25+ years. There were a couple wildflowers and a couple smaller trees, however the main view that our eyes could see was a forest that really took a beating from the zinc factory's activities. We had just walked through our first SuperFund site. How very sad.Once the gray fog cleared away this morning, we had a beautiful blue sky. However, as things normally go out here, the sprinkles arrived in the afternoon.At the Little Gap road crossing, we ran into 2 game wardens and a hunter who just killed a 2 year old turkey with a beard well over 6¢ long. The game wardens told us they were in the process of arresting the hunter as he had caught it illegally. Yikes. Actually it was a joke ¢ they were teasing us. They were all game wardens. The 2 older game wardens had bet the younger game warden that he could not get a turkey today. The bet was a breakfast. Guess the young guy will be getting his next breakfast for free thanks to his coworkers! We chatted with them for a bit and they took our picture. I guess we're quite the freak show still as thru-hikers go. We took a picture of the hunter and the turkey too.We had a pretty rocky trail even after the morning¢s rock scramble. The rocks put a beating on our feet and lower legs, as it¢s impossible to walk with a normal gait. Our feet and legs are always twisting and turning. Oh how we would love to hike a day with a normal gait again. But as we told the game wardens, the rocks in Pennsylvania are overrated. I think we were expecting more, as in longer stretches of them for many days in a row.About 5-10 minutes from camp the sprinkles got heavier, but luckily they stopped while we set up the tent and prepared dinner. We're still struggling trying to lay out our schedule for the next week. It seems like the miles are either too low or too high. We wish we knew for sure where tenting sites were located as that would help in planning. In the mountains, we can hike for miles and not find a level spot. We don¢t particularly want to end our long day searching for a flat tent spot for mile after mile. Perhaps tomorrow we¢ll come up with a game plan, but for now, it's 6:30 about 60 degrees and it¢s not raining! The sun is actually partially out but I'm sure we're not out of the woods for the rain tonight. We shall see. I think we'll look at the charts a bit more and see what we might want to do tomorrow before calling it a night. Goodnight from almost done with Pennsylvania!