Appalachian Trail SOBO Day 61 – A night in Port Clinton
25th September 2023
PA Route 309 (951.8) - Port Clinton (978.3)
Daily miles: 22.5
Total miles: 982.3
I had a good sleep. I didn’t want to get up and hike, but with 27 miles to do today I had to get up and get moving.
I ate some of the leftover brownies and a glass of chocolate milk for breakfast. I felt like all my stuff was spread out which made me anxious. The reality was that it was in 3 places in neat piles. I was still worried I was going to forget something though.
Dang left and we said goodbye forever. It really will be forever as he is hiking two 35 mile days and a 40 so we won’t see him again.
The two older guys left, then I hiked out first out of our group which is standard. I was back on trail at 7:45am. It was raining.
Walking the road back to the trail in the rain
Back into the (wet) forest
A nice but muddy dirt road
I plodded this morning. I couldn’t make myself go any faster than a plod. There were a lot of sticks and branches and blow downs on the trail.
One particular branch tripped me up as my shoe lace got caught on it and I went flying. Landed hard on my shin on my right leg, scraped the front of it. The same bit that had just healed up from the last fall I had! My pack was heavy with food and went over my head and pinned me to the trail. It was an effort to get up. My leg hurt and I could feel it with every step.
I fell over again! My legs are looking pretty bad!
I moved slower. More cautiously. Careful to try and not slip on the wet rocks with my slick shoes.
I normally pee once in the morning and then not again until about midday and then maybe once in the afternoon. Today I had peed 3 times before 9am. My body confuses me. I don’t think I had hydrated particularly well yet I was peeing long clear wees. The need to go was always urgent too. I came uncomfortably close to peeing myself multiple times!
I continued on over the rocks and by 12:30pm I was hungry so stopped and had a standing break. I ate some chicken and some Pringles.
Lots of rocks
Lots more rocks
Chicken break, it was ok, probably won’t buy it again
Shortly after the trail became a dirt road for a couple of miles which was nice. I stopped to speak to a couple of day hikers; they thought I had hiked from Georgia to Maine and I was on my way back again! The 2 older guys who had hiked out this morning passed me as I was talking to them and then I caught back up to them and passed them again. I had to go fast because I needed to pee again. 6 pees already. Most odd.
SOBO section hikers
I then came to a junction where I could take a blue blazed trail which was shorter that the AT, the AT went up to some view points and over some rocks. I wondered what to do. I didn’t really see the point of going to a view point where there was no view - because it was still raining! It was supposed to clear up this afternoon but it continued to drizzle. My umbrella went up and down and my coat went on and off all day. Even when it wasn’t raining so heavily it was still dripping down from the trees.
All springs should be signed like this!
I took the blue blaze. I didn’t know what the others would do. Plus my leg was hurting so doing fewer miles today wouldn’t be a bad thing.
I was also feeling a bit glum today. Someone who I thought was a friend I noticed unfollowed me on Instagram and that was playing on mind. I shouldn’t let it bother me but it did. The perils of social media.
I haven’t cried on this trail so far (apart from when I have fallen over and hurt myself!). I’ve actually felt kind of emotionless. I could have cried today, but I didn’t. I just felt like I was in a funk.
I ambled for the next few miles, having found myself with fewer miles than I would have had without following the blue blaze.
The edge of the reservoir
86 years now
I was hovering on the edge of being chilly on the downs and sweaty on the ups. There was a short but steep uphill which took me far longer than it should, then with about 1.5 miles to go I heard voices. It was May Queen and Lemonhope, they took the blue blaze too. It was nice to see and hear people and it really lifted my mood.
We received an alert about this man who was “armed and dangerous” and thought to be on the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania (PA) right were we were heading to
We walked together down the hill, under the bridge and through the town of Port Clinton to get to the pavilion, owned by the church, where they let hikers camp.
No rocks!
Under the bridge
Port Clinton
May Queen getting a soda from a random vending machine outside someone’s house
The pavilion is about half a mile out of town. It’s a big open structure. I stayed here in 2018. There is a portaloo and that’s it. There is a house two blocks down the road which offers water so we walked back to there to fill our bottles. Back at the pavilion I was glad to take my shoes off as they had been wet all day.
There were some picnic tables and we all sat at the one with the least amount of bird shit. There was A LOT of bird shit around! Pyro was already there and he had taken the blue blaze too. We were just waiting on Toe and we weren’t sure whether she would have taken the blue blaze or not.
The pavilion where we spent the night
She arrived about 40 minutes after us and she too had taken the blue blaze. We all had the same thought process which was… validating, I suppose.
We ate dinner and then found the least bird poopy parts of the pavilion to lay out our sleep systems. I was lying down before 8pm.
I had 10 urinations today.
Saw lots of deer.
The sunrise is at 06:55 tomorrow.
