Caledonia State Park

6/22 ~ Caledonia State Park (13.2 AT miles, 2 mile road walk, 1 mile for water)

I'm far too clean to be a backpacker tonight. I've showered and washed my hair. I actually smell good (thanks to the hemp soap). Dr. Bronner's seems to have done a decent but not admirable job on my hair. Now if only this campsite for which I paid $13 were level, life would be perfect. It's as if they aren't expecting people to tent or something.

Today was not a good day. I really need to avoid road walks - they make me hate what I'm doing. I push to get into a town, and then there's a good long walk with traffic zooming by. I have not yet brought myself to hitch, though other thruhikers tell me that anybody with good radar and common sense can do it safely. I have yogied two rides, however(Yogi, as in BooBoo and picnic baskets - it's a widely used hiker term for charming people into giving you something. I yogied a Sam Adams at Gathland State Park.) I'm fine with that because I can check people out before I ask. I also paid for one shuttle.

Anyway, the post mistress in South Mountain made my life a little easier by selling me a postal money order on my ATM card and then cashing it. I wasn't out of money, but buying groceries in a convenience store would have set me back below my safety zone and there ain't no ATM in South Mountain, PA. Some encouragement from Tino and one excellent milkshake later, and I was cheered up enough to get back on the trail. I also had a tasty cheese sandwich at the same lunch counter. The milkshake (at 1.99) was actually more expensive than the sandwich (1.85) which amazed me.

For some stupid reason, the Rocky Mountain Shelters are located half way back down the mountain you just hiked UP from PA233 for 1.8 miles. To add insult to injury, the spring is ALL THE WAY BACK DOWN TO PA233!. God, I was mad about that extra mile. I mean, I had to rest for an hour before I could continue because I had climbed that sucker twice. Here's what I don't understand though -- the climb up on the AT takes 1.8 miles, almost twice what the shelter/spring blue blaze takes. I'm convinced that this trail is not so much a trail as it is a 2,100 mile continuous pile of rocks.

Maybe the gubmint was able to acquire the land simply because no one else wanted it! I decided not to stay at Rocky Mountain Shelters because the bugs were really bad tonight and there was no where nice to tent. Also, I was alone [though I ran into a southbounding thruhiker headed for this shelter when I was on my way to Caledonia. D'oh!, and so there would be no one to commisserate with about the spring and the

bugs. I hiked on to Rt. 30. There were 4 or 5 evil rock scrambles up and down on that 3 mile stretch. Quite a surprise since the profile showed it as flat (I looked at someone else's map). I'm learning that flat on a profile usually means there's something else nasty going on there. I wish there were some system for showing the ruggedness of the terrain. It would make my planning easier.

Right after US30 (the same road I lived near in Illinois for years and years), the terrain became what it was changing to for the 1/2 mile before Rt.30. This park is truly gorgeous. Towering hemlocks, a babbling brook and where there is understory, it's a lush tangle of rhododendron and laurel. I will be laying over for a day here to recuperate a bit.

I'm tenting next to a really nice thruhiker named Dog Bone. We talked a lot, but I never got the story behind the trail name. I was totally exhausted by the time I got to my campsite, and he bought me a soda and told me about all the mistakes he'd made at the beginning -- this included carrying an 80lb pack for the first 30 miles. He looks sort of like Sean Connery and has the accent to go with it. He's from Scotland, has lived all over the world, and is currently living in Canada.