Wiley Shelter
8/9 ~ Wiley Shelter (16.1 miles + 1.2 mile road walk)
(All these road walks indicate that I don't hitchhike alone. Since I'm *hiking* alone, however, that means I don't hitch.)
Well, I made the 16 today. My socks were NOT dry this morning, and I paid for that with a hellish blister.
It was a gorgeous day. Sunny, breezy and not hot. The hike wasn't as hard as I expected, but it seemed very LONG. It's always that last mile to the shelter that seems like forever, and yet this shelter just sort of appeared on the trail. You walk right into it on the white blazes and exit behind it. Mashipicong was like this too.
The shelter was old, but much care had been taken with the whole area. There was a tent platform, and the picnic table (often missing, so always welcome) was under a tarp. There were plenty of clotheslines hung, it had a stove/fireplace sort of thing in front of it. (Some shelters have these and some don't. Fires are banned, and I've never seen one lit on the AT. The privy was also quite pleasant.
I hit another deli today and this time I'm not even cooking dinner. It was a much better sandwich. Cheese sandwiches great hiking fuel for me. In any case, I ate around 3pm and though I hiked 8 miles after that, I'm still not hungry. There was this really weird thing on the trail today: an arch that said "Gate of Heaven". It led to a clearing overgrown with grass which was actually an unmaintained cemetary. At the time I passed it, the town fire siren was going off, and the light was at that very-late-afternoon yellow cast it gets out here. There's a buttery color to everything it touches. In any case, spooky in a good way.
