Days 122 + 123

Day 122: Mile 1234 | Eckville Shelter

At 9am we left the Port Clinton Hotel. That was their checkout time. For the price we paid it seemed early, but we had no choice. It was a relatively good day with a few good views:

We walked together for the majority of it. It was hot out and we walked slow. The sun in combination with the humidity made our salt chafe burn. We decided to aim for the Eckville shelter. It has a solar shower and, even if it was cold, It would be the easiest way to get the salt off of my skin and hopefully help my salt chafe.

When we arrived we found a house with a shed behind it. The shed had been converted into a shelter with bunks. There was one bunk left when I got there. It was supposed to rain that night and the tenting across the street was in a grassy field.

grassy fields + single walled sil-nylon tents = condensation nightmares

I chose to set up in the shelter on that top bunk. I went out and made dinner while Miles went and set up his tent. I ate with Earthheart and her dad, who was accompanying her for the week. Doctor Who?, Crazy Brit, and D-Squared joined us, too. I had cous cous and garlic herb tuna with vegetable cream cheese.

Day 123: Mile 1253.5 | Stealth Camp (code name: "Camp Woo")

We headed back to the trail early in the morning. I woke up at 5am with the older hikers in the shelter. Miles and I were out of camp by 6am. It was hot and humid early on. We saw some great views in the morning at Dan's Pulpit:

Later in the day we ran into Blackbird and Biscuits taking a break! We stopped and snacked with them. After our snack we all walked separately, listening to our own music or podcasts. I listened to Radiolab for a while. Eventually, I caught up to Miles, who had been faster than me all day. We walked together to the next road crossing where we found Krafty, Supersize, and Biscuits waiting for Blackbird. They said there was a restaurant opening at noon 500 feet from the trail, we could see it from where we were standing. Miles and I were hungry for lunch and agreed to go with them. It was 11:50am so we all dug out our phone chargers while we waited.

At noon they opened the doors and let us in. We sat at a long communal table and they let us plug our phones in to charge nearby. I got a refreshing Blue Moon with a fresh orange slice and a huge salad. Krafty, Biscuits, Supersize, Miles, and I all ordered and soon after Blackbird arrived with Frick and Frack in tow. We all ate and had lively conversation. It was, honestly, the first time since we'd arrived in Pennsylvania that I actually felt like I was having a good day. It was so great to be surrounded by positive people, sometimes that can make all the difference.

Toward the end of lunch, a man came up to our table. He said his name was McG and that he previously thru-hiked. He dropped a $100 bill on the table and told us to get ourselves another round. Before we could really thank him he turned and walked out of the restaurant! All of us thru-hikers were so excited. Apparently, he only comes in a few times a summer and gives a few bucks to thru-hikers the bar tender told me. We all got another drink.

We left the restaurant in the late afternoon sun. All of us off to hike our own paces. I turned on some music from The Dawn of Midi and cruised on the relatively easy, hilly terrain. The rocks were annoying, but thankfully a large portion of trail this day was on an old forest road:

When I caught up to Krafty and Black Bird we were approaching Knife's Edge, an iconic rock scramble. We went up it in the heat and talked the whole way. As many times as I'd met them, I felt like we really didn't know each other that well. We joked about our first impressions of each other and they remarked at how much I'd changed since our first encounter. We walked and talked for a while and soon caught back up to Miles. The four of us climbed up and over Bear Rocks, another big rock scramble, and descended in the heat among a herd of day hikers.

Once we climbed down from Bear Rocks the four of us stopped at the next shelter to find water. Biscuits and Supersize were there, too. Water in Pennsylvania up to this point had been hard to find. This stretch had been especially difficult. I had filled my bottles at the restaurant because I couldn't find any before or after it. This source was a spring but it was flowing so slowly that it was essentially just a muddy puddle. We used a large freezer baggie to scoop water out of the source and into our bags. We had to wait a minute or two after every scoop to let the sediment settle so that it wouldn't clog our filters. The water source was also almost half a mile down a very steep hill. There weren't many tent sites nearby and none of us were satisfied with camping there.

We decided to keep going. Near a cell tower after we crossed a dirt road Miles and I found a large, flat campsite that we decided to stop at. The dirt road seemed deserted and we assumed that it was just a service road for the cell tower. Biscuits wanted to keep going because he was meeting his family that weekend and wanted to get far enough ahead to catch them on their planned day. We said goodbye and figured we'd catch the Woo Crew again later. Miles and I set up and ate dinner together. The bugs were bad so we stayed in our tents.

Around 8pm we were hanging out in Miles' tent. I marveled, "Wow its 8pm and we're pretty much ready for bed! I guess that's what happens when you get up early!" He laughed and said, "Yeah we should do it more often." A few minutes later we saw a silver sedan go flying up the gravel road, fast. Not a minute after it drove by the first time we heard it whip around and drive back past our camp. It screeched to a halt in the parking lot of the cell tower maintenance station and turned around one more time. It drove about a quarter mile up the road from us. Just far enough that we couldn't see it clearly but we could see its tail lights. It put Miles and I on edge. We usually didn't camp near roads but this one seemed so desolate.

We heard a car door open and slam shut. We couldn't see anything. Then I heard three loud popping sounds: "POP! POP! POP!" To me it sounded like gunshots. Then I heard a sort of muffled yelling. A woman's voice yelled, "Stop! Stop! Please stop!" My heart raced. I was scared. Miles and I decided we needed to get out of there. We didn't feel safe at all. I went back to my tent and packed up as quickly as I could. I put my shoes on and deflated my sleeping pad (I cursed its loud air valve). We tried to be quiet. I shoved it all into my backpack as quickly as I could without bothering to pack it the way I normally would. In my pajamas and glasses I hoisted my backpack over my shoulder and we left camp as fast as possible. I left my headlamp off so that it wouldn't be seen.

As we quickly walked up the trail I called the police. "911 what's your emergency?" The operator answered. I tried to tell her what was happening. "Ma'am you have to slow down. All I can hear is your heavy breathing." I tried to explain to her that I was trying to quickly get to a safer place. She finally listened to me and said my location wasn't her jurisdiction but she could transfer me. She asked for my name and made me spell it. She transferred me to another police station. They made me explain the whole story over again. They asked for my name and made me spell it. It wasn't their jurisdiction either. They transferred me. This happened three more times until, finally the state police answered. The state police were kind. They listened to me fully, didn't make me spell my name more than once, and said they would go check it out right now. Frustrated but glad that I got through to the right people, I hiked on.

I lead Miles and I up the trail by trail. We hiked as fast as we could, looking for campsites. Nothing we came across really felt safe. I searched the dark woods around me for some kind of comfort. It wasn't the woods or the dark that scared me; it was strangers and roads. I knew the Woo Crew was ahead of us somewhere and we aimed for their camp. We needed to see other hikers, familiar faces.

We watched the sunset as we hiked through Pennsylvania game lands with their creepy hunting shelters posted up near the trail. Eventually I smelled fire in the distance. My heart leaped, maybe it was other hikers! We passed a two person Big Agnes tent but it didn't look like any of the Woo Crew. We quietly said Woo toward it, their signature call to each other, but no one said woo back. The light inside the tent went out. We kept walking. After 6 miles in 2 hours we finally arrived at a larger camp with a fire. "Woo?" I asked into the night. "Woo!" I heard in the distance! I never knew I'd be so happy to hear the word Woo in the dark woods.

We ran up to their camp. "Thank goodness we found you guys!" I said, out of breath. We told them what happened and they comforted us. We all sat around the campfire and tried to joke about scary things in the woods to lighten our moods. Krafty showed us where some blueberries were nearby and a flat spot where we could set up. Miles and I shared his tent and agreed to sleep in the next morning.