raven rock shelter to thru it all hostel

i didn’t sleep well last night, i’m not really sure why. there weren’t really any bugs, but my skin decided to interpret everything as a potential mosquito bite. we had some serious thunder in the distance, but it didn’t end up raining.

i left around 07:00 to begin what i thought was a 20 mile day. the hiking today was a little rough. while it didn’t rain at raven rock shelter, it rained hard at some of the shelters further north on the trail. this resulted in it being not only hot, but extremely wet. my shirt often felt like i had just jumped into a pool.

pennsylvania is often referred to as ‘rocksylvania’ because it’s trail is uniquely rocky. before i even crossed into pa, the rockiness was beginning:

i crossed the mason-dixon line into pennsylvania today as well. i was talking with magz at the time, and when i crossed into the north, i turned around and peed into the south, you know, to assert my dominance. ;) (full credit: the idea was actually rocket’s) as i was doing this, maestro came down the trail to see some full frontal. he passed it off and as i headed int pennsylvania, he also was peeing on the south. he’s from arizona, but still felt it was the right thing to do.

we all met up at a park for lunch, along with black paws. at lunch however rocket, maestro, and i discovered a hostel at 23 miles that we’d be able to get to and do our resupply that was scheduled for tomorrow. our plan had been to resupply tomorrow at the beginning of a 23 mile day. now we’re set up to be able to hike 19.8 tomorrow and do the half-gallon challenge at the end of the day.

the three of us hiked fairly close all afternoon and walked to the hostel together. the hostel was in the basement of a church that looked like a mopar building. the hostel itself was in a windowless back basement room.

we waited for a few minutes to get a shuttle to wal-mart where we did our resupply. when we returned we immediately headed down the street to bbq, only to find that they were sold out of everything! disappointed, we headed back to the hostel to try and order delivery.

this turned into hell as google kept telling us a place delivered, we’d figure out what we wanted, call, and be told they didn’t deliver. even pizza hut and domino’s didn’t deliver. what even? eventually rocket offered to get and uber and he’d go pick it up for us. we called the pizza place we wanted and now the phone lines were busy. this went on for a time before we finally got lucky and got through. the person on the end of the phone was the sloth from zootopia.

“i’d like a calzone, please.”

“c-al–z-oo-ne. what kind.”

“spinach and mushroom, thanks.”

“spin-ach mmmm-uuu-sssh-rrr-oo-m”

when rocket got there, she had messed up the order, having forgot his calzone. he opted not to have them make one, and that was lucky. the calzone i got was the biggest calzone i’ve ever seen. i was only able to eat half.

one additional image from today: