After three days off of the trail, I'm ready to get back on. We drive back to Pen Mar county park and I again cross the Mason-Dixon line and enter Pennsylvania. I soon pass a Southbound hiker who reports seeing 30 northbound thru hikers in the past 24 hours. It may be that the front of the main wave of hikers is catching up.
An uneventful day ends 18.6 miles later at the massive swimming pool in Caledonia State Park. I'd been looking forward to being weightless, just held up by the water. I swim a few fast laps and it feels good, a surprise since I have not been in a lap pool for so long.
The next day it rains all day. Not a horrible drenching rain, just a steady light rain all day. My rain pants and boots work to keep my feet dry. The shirt and shorts are damp under the rain gear but not soaked, so good enough. I finish the 19.1 miles at Pine Grove Furnace State Park, home of the famous Half-Gallon Ice Cream Challenge, in which hikers commemorate finishing half the trail by devouring a half gallon of Hershey Chocolate. I hang around a while but just can't get excited about gorging on ice cream in the rain.
Today I hiked the 19.6 miles to Boiling Spring PA. Two areas are called out as rock mazes, which is probably a fair characterization, though it is not really that different than the rocky scrambles on much of the trail so far.
The wind was gusty today, though not very strong. Twice today dead trees plunged to the ground. That is not uncommon and I've lost count of the trees crashing down near me. It appears that when a tree dies it often gets hung up on other growth rather than falling to the forest floor. Over time some branches may rot and drop, or the whole tree might slip. It is not hard to find widow-makers all along the trail, ready to fall. In fact, many such branches hang precariously even over the trail.
When the second tree fell I was not alone. A young fawn, still in spotted coat, froze, staring in the direction of the tree. After a minute, the doe came out of the brush near the tree. The baby was scared enough to need the reassurance of some fresh milk.
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