Sunday, July 19 11:45 am 17.8 mi
AT 1202.1 Stealth Site → AT 1219.9 Port Clinton/Hamburg Microtel
Weather: Hot and sunny, warm sweaty overnight
Trail Conditions: Busy AM – was on trail by 7:30, and a half dozen hikers had already hiked past as I packed up camp. Very rocky day. One section was very overgrown, but with rocks and in Puddles’s case – rattlesnakes – hidden under foot! Super steep descent down into Port Clinton – I’d hate to do that without trekking poles! Or go up it!
My Condition: Really enjoyed a town day! Hip belt rash, maybe from skin glide
Steve, a local shuttle driver, gave Puddles and I a ride to the Microtel in Hamburg. It’s amazing how 2 miles in the grand scheme of things really isn’t that big a deal, and I could easily tack that on to my day, but when it’s off trail miles that’s the last thing I want to do. Cracker Barrel lunch – quart of mac and cheese, fries, resupply at Walmart – replaced my new headphones which I lost/misplaced yesterday, got a new phone case after I cracked my Lifeproof dropping it at Black Rock, VA. Watched the tail end of the new Jumanji movie and Shrek while we all pampered our skin with a 3 stage wash/mask/facial.
Post Trail Analysis
As someone who’s biggest fear going into the trail was ticks, the worst days were the ones where you were wading through tall, unkempt grass. It’s worse when the ground underneath is rough and rocky, and worse still when you’re in rattlesnake country. Walking through the overgrown meadow, I had an image in my head of a snake, completely hidden from view by the tall grass, among the rocks underfoot. Thankfully, I made it through unscathed. The first person through almost never has to worry about snakes; it’s the second person that has to deal with a ticked off snake that almost got stepped on by the first person that really gets the short end of the stick! Poor Puddles was left to deal with that very situation I must have unconsciously mentally manifested – sorry about that!
The descent down into Port Clinton was one of the steepest sections of trail I can remember. If you lost your footing here, you’d simply roll and bounce your way right to the bottom.
This was a blissful nero day, which would turn into an additional zero day tomorrow. Grubhub options and takeout opportunities from seemingly any restaurant we could imagine, options on top of options with a Walmart resupply, a nearby Gander Mountain superstore, Hamburg is a pretty happening place! It is here that Blue taught us about “renting” stuff from Walmart. She needed to complete some mandatory online stuff for the Navy, and needed a computer in order to do it. So she purchased a laptop from Walmart, completed the trainings, and then returned the laptop. We’d go on to “rent” an Amazon Fire Stick, sparkly Joe Exotic pants in which to binge watch that train wreck of a show, even a fancy bathrobe (which was obviously too important to simply rent and became a luxury item in my pack for a time).
This was my first, and probably only time, engaging in such an intensive skin care routine for my face. I found out the hard way that you aren’t supposed to eat the brown sugar face scrub. The mask didn’t stick very well to my hairy face. I don’t think my skin became any more radiant than it had been. 0/10, would not recommend. Although it did make for some funny pictures!
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