port clinton to allentown shelter

rocket and i were on trail just before 07:00. the pavilion was a decent place to sleep, though it was between two roads, one quite busy, so it took my brain a bit to figure out how to tune out the noise.

the climb out of port clinton wasn’t as bad as the descent in. at the top of the climb we found this:

what even?

then it was more of the same. flat forested trail without a lot of views.a friend who did the trail a few years ago emailed me recently in part to tell me that he too had trouble with pennsylvania’s flat monotony. it’s crazy, even the views all look the same to me.

there was a blue blaze that cut a few miles of trail, and rocket and i opted to take it. the trail at this point passed a small reservoir. and met back up with the AT a few miles later. we hiked on and eventually got to a road and took a left to eckville shelter, which is in a shed behind a house with a caretaker.

we had lunch and threw our socks and shoes out on the lawn to dry out. we took a long lunch and i sat in the sun for a little while waiting for my socks to get nice and dry. it would be the first time in many days my socks weren’t wet.

after lunch we hit the trail again and briefly had our dry socks and shoes threatened by some extremely soggy trail. the afternoon finally showed the rocks of ‘rocksylvania’. some very long stretches of boulders that tested our feet and our balance. they definitely slowed us down a bit as it took far longer to traverse the last 3 miles than it should have.

finally we reached the shelter, and there were muggles everywhere. some guys down the hill pulled down a dead tree with a rope, some others were feeding a 4 month old baby and had 3 dogs. some scouts arrived a bit later. it’s memorial day weekend after all. the dead tree guys have a phone pumping out tinny music across the camp, one of my least favorite sounds.

we had a few hours to kill, and lounged in our beds. i thought about napping, but ended up messaging a lot of folks, as i had some signal. cruiser arrived a little latet having nkt taken the blue blaze, and he looked wiped. the rocks had sapped his energy. some other hikers we had met at 501 shelter showed up all smiles. they had slack packed all day and were staying at a friend’s house tonight.

jealous.

one additional image from today: