Not too much to report from these days. One day an older lady gave Blondie and me homemade chocolate chip cookies for lunch which was very nice. On day 73, I crossed the border from New Jersey into Pennsylvania. I was worried about getting to town (Delaware water gap) before dark as it was my longest day yet at 24.8 miles. I took shorter and fewer breaks than usual and although the trail was rocky in parts, other parts were nice wide gently sloping trail without many rocks. I surprised myself when I easily made it to town by 4:15 and even got to the post office before it closed. I walked almost 25 miles in 8 and a half hours! I was proud of myself for proving myself wrong. Once at Delaware Water Gap, I went to the church hostel where id be staying and discovered a big group of Southbounders! I haven’t encountered so many SOBOs in one place in over a month and a half so it was exciting to see I’ve caught up to people. I’d met many of them before—one or two of them on the day I got off trail which meant I made up the two weeks I was off trail by catching up with them. There was bartender, wood butcher, ziploc, rebar, chimp, and then Blondie and delta who I’ve been hiking with. A nice old man from the church showed up offering us a ride to the next town to resupply. It was perfect timing, right after I finished showering and we were discussin how to get to the store. We accepted his kind offer and resupplied and spent the evening pigging out and relaxing.
The next day the big group of us all headed to Wind Gap PA where we planned to stay at the Beer Stein, a bar that lets hikers camp in their yard. We experienced the rocks that PA is infamous for today. About ten miles straight of trail totally covered in rocks of every size, scattered in a way where it’s pretty much impossible to ever put your foot down flat. It was tough walking but still not as bad as the northbounders had made it seem. Perhaps the worst was later on. We got to the beer stein by 4ish and set up our tents in their yard. I turned on my phone and found out Wolf bird has gotten off trail. I was so sad to find this out but also understand his reasons completely–his dog mabel has cancer and so he needs to take care of her. He does a way better job explaining the series of events on his blog: http://puckettventures.com/category/appalachian-trail/. Fortunately, Cool Blue is still hiking and is a week or so behind. Hopefully he will hike quickly and be able to eventually catch up.
Back at the beer stein We got some food at the bar and many of us weirdly got salads since a girl down the bar had ordered one and it looked so good. Later in the evening, we made a fire in the bars fire pit in their yard. Me and the seven boys bro-Ed out sitting around the fire. Well more like I sat there amused by their often ridiculous conversation topics. It was a late bedtime for me at 10:45 or so.