palmerton, pa to wind gap, pa

today was hard. we slept in a little since the grocery resupply wasn’t open till 08:00. but i am pleased to report that we woke up feeling good. at around 07:30 we walked around to the restaurant side of bert’s steakhouse. half the restaurant was a diner, the other side looked more like a steakhouse.

rocket and i breakfasted and then headed to the grocer for resupply. we finished packing up and were walking through town shortly before 09:00, very late to be getting on trail.

we had an almost 2 mile walk through town to get back to the AT, and then we took a blue blaze that will apparently be the official AT next year. the trail was extremely steep and rocky. the sun beat down on us and my freshly washed clothes were soaked with sweat in minutes.

when we got to the top it levelled off pretty much for the day. for a few miles we had fantastic flat trail. it was hot, and there was no tree cover, so i hiked with my sad umbrella.

shortly the trail turned and then it got rough. for most of the day, the rocks made our hike miserable. to top it all off, we had a 17 mile water carry.

around 11:00 we stopped in a shady spot and had a snack, and cracked open one of the beers we had left over from town. they were very warm, and not particularly enjoyable, but they were liquid.

we hiked on for mile after mile of painful rocks, poking our feet, stubbing our toes, tripping us regularly. we pushed hard to try to get through it, but the rocks had us walking at a much slower pace than usual.

at almost 14:00 we were still 4 miles from where we hoped to have lunch. we stopped at a road crossing to eat. neither of us were particularly hungry, but i forced myself to eat. rocket didn’t have much.

after lunch we hiked on, the rocks relentless. as we approached the shelter, where we hoped to have lunch and filter water i spied my first rattlesnake! we took some photos of it, but didn’t provoke it into rattling, though we were tempted.

then, literally less than 5 minutes later, a second rattlesnake. this one was larger, but had a lot less rattles and it immediately coiled up and started rattling!

from there we made it to the water, and then dragged ourselves the last 5 miles to town. i called magz and was so whiny she threatened to hang up on me. i caught up to rocket who had a hiking pole malfunction, and he asked if i heard him yelling at the rocks. (i hadn’t.)

by the time we got to town we were beat. we started walking the mile to detzi’s tavern where we were allowed to camp out back. we threw out our thumbs and the second car to pass us picked us up!

we arrived at detzi’s tavern a few minutes later, and pitched our tents. my tent smells bad. i think i must have rolled a slug up in it because there is a weird brown stain and the entire thing smells like low tide.

we had dinner at the restaurant, the special was lasagna, so i got that, a salad, and some sweet potato fries.

we talked over dinner about how much today sucked and how tired we both are. after dinner we retired to our tents even though it was barely past 19:00.

some additional images from today: