allentown shelter to palmerton pa

the muggles with the tinny phone music stayed up until 10 despite the other 20 people in camp turning in at 9. lame.

i was on trail a little before 07:00. the trail today was pretty flat, though there were some sections of rocks that definitely slowed me down.

i had a rough morning mentally. i just wasn’t feeling all that strong. there was a tickle in the back of my throat that i’m not sure about. later in the day i mentioned it to rocket and he said he had the same thing. dun Dun DUNNN.

i stopped at an overlook around 10 to eat a snack. rocket said he was thinking of just hiking through lunch and getting to town before it got too hot.

a little while later i crossed a power line. it was the strangest thing. they had thrown orange netting over the rocks and then half covered it with mulch. the area covered was huge. i could not figure out what the purpose was.

he passed me, but i caught up to him a few miles later at some trail magic, powerade and hostess cupcakes. we were only a handful of miles from town.

the afternoon was much better. the trail was really beautiful, traversing the mountain above palmerton. it was completely covered in ferns with the occasional tree or mountain laurel. it was also hot and humid. there was something about the humidity and the amount of ferns that made it so i could smell them, a faint sweet smell.

i chatted with magz a bit. she was waiting on the veterinary hospital (VESH) to triage cricket. it sounds like one of her molars may have abscessed. i’m not sure why, but this shit always happens when our regular vet is closed. VESH is amazing, but holy hell expensive, and triage means if your dog isn’t on death’s door, you wait. magz had been waiting 8 hours at this point and had moved from number 6 in the queue to number 2.

rocket and i made it to the road and began walking into town. the cliffs above us were crazy.

the walk into and through town was about 2 miles. on the pavement it was fantastically hot. i even deployed my sad umbrella against the sun. rocket texted the hostel owner and we waited a few minutes before she arrived.

the hostel was behind a restaurant, and was pretty nice. they even had AC. we sat for a minute and cooled down. rocket called around to see what restaurants were open, and confirmed the grocery store was open until 20:00.

we went to an italian restaurant for lunch and then back to the hostel for showers and laundry. we watched a later transformers movie, and then headed out for resupply and dinner. it was about 18:30.

we walked to the grocery store . . . and it was closed despite having talked to a human only hours before. we had planned to get both dinner and resupply there, so we went back to the same italian restaurant to get dinner. we swung by rite aid and also grabbed some ice cream for dessert.

we ate dinner and watched “live free or die hard” while we ate. we had the entire hostel to ourselves.

some additional images from today: