Day 2

Saturday May 24, 2014

Darlington Shelter to Duncannon, PA (Staying at the Stardust Motel)

I fell today.  Yes, a sacrifice to the trail gods was necessary before the descent into Duncannon.  As usual for me it was on the least rocky section of trail…I loosen my focus for 2 seconds…skinned my right knee and sporting a 3 inch diameter black bruise on my hip (where my camera jammed into me).  However, NOT BAD! 🙂  I sat for a few minutes so the initial pang of OUCH went away and then was able to get right back up and hike.  Hello, my trail name is BoobOnARock…

Let’s now backup to the beginning of this glorious day.  “Good Company” left about a ½ hour before us.  We finally rolled out at about 7:30 am and pushed into one slight uphill followed by another beautiful field walk.  It was here we met “Shoefly”, the ridgerunner for this section.  He had just come from Cove Mountain Shelter where he had packed out quite a lot of trash.  Now headed to Darlington, Shoefly asked us what the trash situation was up there.  We assured him it was clean!

Heading on north we encountered a long, long uphill.  Yep, had to take a breather on the way up that one. 😉  We eventually crossed the pipeline and started a slight downhill.  On our way down we passed a guy and his two sons hiking up to the pipeline.  This guy told us he had just acquired all their camping equipment off of Facebook for $100 and they had camped at Cove Mountain Shelter last night…uh oh…my mind was connecting dots.

Our friend, shuttle driver, and fellow Trail Dame, Cindy hiked up from Duncannon to meet us on the trail!  🙂 We met up and headed for Cove Mountain Shelter for lunch.  It’s DOWNHILL people, seriously, I would not stay here overnight!  And the water is WAY downhill and is barely flowing!!  I feel for the thru hikers that come through here in June & July.  When we got there the fire was smoking.  Okay, let me just say there is a big sign in the shelter that says “NO CAMPFIRES”.  We know who started this fire!  That family of three that we passed that seem to need some education on how to camp/backpack in the woods and leave no trace.  Good Grief!

Cove Mountain Shelter

After lunch we headed down into Duncannon, stopping at Hawk Rock.  The trail gets pretty hellacious at this point.  Very rocky, very steep.  Oh, and there was this doggie hiking group with all these big dogs…which were very cute…but seemed to enjoy pulling their owners down this devilish descent.  They were on my heels and I was more than happy to move over and let them by!

The first place it felt safe enough to stop and take out my camera!!

Boy, was I happy to get down to the road!! Whew, that was crazy!

Cindy shuttled me to my car at 147.  I headed to the Stardust for a shower and Google headed down to Trindle Road with Cindy to pick up her jeep.  Hey! And then Bag Lady showed up!!  🙂 🙂 Once Cindy and Google were back, we all headed up to the Ranch House for dinner.  Yummy!

Credit to Bag Lady for this Group Selfie at the Stardust Motel!

Google and I made a note that the Ranch House serves breakfast.  Well, okay then, we will be back tomorrow morning! 🙂

Hike on!