Post #9 Fig Newtons

The first day of this new week was great.  We enjoyed a rare summer day in PA  with low humidity and temperatures in the 70’s, very similar to an Adirondack summer day.  The “we” that enjoyed the weather were Justin, Christina, Garret, and Bo Weber who not only brought me breakfast, but spent the day hiking with me AND carrying my pack!   I was blessed with good conversation and entertainment in the form of watching Garret drop off a rope swing into a cool, spring fed, mountain pond.  Thanks, Weber’s, for spending the day with your crazy uncle!

After I stumbled over countless rocks the following day, Ivan and Lois Lantz picked me up at Port Clinton and I spent the next two nights at their home in Reading, enjoying home cooked meals, sleeping in a bed, and getting abused by Elizabeth. (She told me that I was the only nut in this house.) It was great catching up with friends that I don’t get to see often enough.

Then I was back out in the high heat and high humidity.  While silk blazing, I imagined an illustration much like a Far Side panel: a spider mite digging his heels in, holding his strand of silk that he has spun across the AT, calling to his friends “I’ve caught a big one!”  I went to sleep that sultry evening listening to thunder slowly rolling towards me.

It’s good to occasionally vary one’s routine. My typical daily routine is to get up with the birds around 5 am, and be on the trail by 6:30. The previous night’s thunderstorm continued into dawn, and delayed the start of my day; it was 8:00 until Grimm and I got on the trail as the sky was clearing. Grimm is another flip flopper of the same vintage as yours truly and we seem to spend a couple of days a week with each other. During our early afternoon lunch we decided we would have an early supper at the trailside restaurant that just reopened with outdoor dining, located at the next road crossing. So I continued my tour of PA’s food establishments on foot. After supper, we hiked two more miles where we set up camp for the evening.

We stayed in Palmerton, PA, at a hostel behind Bert’s Steakhouse Diner. Palmerton on is the site of an EPA superfund restoration project designed to re-vegetate the mountains after everything died there. It was discovered that zinc mining companies had been leaching zinc slag into the water and air for years. The AT is adjacent to the restoration site and I was encouraged to see the land recovering and satisfied to know that we can fix the damage that we cause. The ascent from Palmerton required scrambling up boulders, using hands as well as feet. The low humidity and low vegetation combined to give us fantastic views.

The points of the rocks that are sticking about two inches out of the ground battered our feet; bruising the bottoms of them. This was a section of trail where one could make a case for wearing hiking boots instead of trail runners.

The last 30 miles of trail before we entered the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area had few springs adjacent to the trail. And the few springs that were available were often over a half mile away, down the mountain. We were blessed, however, with water caches that a trail angel placed adjacent to dirt road crossings and shelters.

 I discovered that food can be a real pick-me-up.  I remembered that many stores in PA have smoked Lebanon sweet bologna.  When I put bologna in a flour tortilla and have Fig Newtons for dessert, I feel like I can conquer Mt. Everest!  And you won’t believe how good restaurant food tastes after hiking 15 miles and eating nothing but pasta sides for several days.

  I have to sign off now; it’s time to continue my tour of restaurants in the Delaware Water Gap.