Good times at DWG.

Day 75 - 6/30/10
I slept in the shelter last night, which was not my original
intention. I had my tent set up, but Likely offered to tent out
instead because he snores really loud and he didn't want to keep
everyone awake all night in the shelter. That was nice of him, and I
did sleep very nicely in there. It was the coldest night we've had in
a while, so I actually had to sleep inside my bag with the thing
entirely zipped up. I prefer and would take that over sweating
profusely all night any day though.

I started hiking around 8:30, and maybe 20 minutes in realized my Sony
voice recorder was missing. I knew I had it when I left that morning,
so I backtracked all the way to the shelter and found it within 50 ft.
from it. Must've fallen out right when I had started. So that annoyed
me a little, having to run back and then redo mileage I had already
done.

After a while I started thinking a lot about why I'm doing this trip.
I reminded myself that I want to be here, and I'm doing something that
makes me happy. Sometimes you lose sight of it all, but when you
remember that this is all in the name of fun and enjoyment it makes
things like running back to find something you lost not so bad.

I finished up the 6.4 miles into town by 11:30, getting to the free
church hostel and finding The Crusher and Pistol (another Mainer)
already there. I got situated and then we went to get some lunch. We
ended up at this place where you can get a piece of pie and a hotdog
for 2.49...2.49! So I got two of those, and after that a cupcake.
Pretty nice lunch. We walked over to an outfitters after that, then a
couple gas stations to see if a resupply was possible with what they
had. It was not, so now I needed to get to the next town over
(Stroudsburg) to get food. Since I needed to do that I figured I'd try
to get some laundry done too. So we headed back to the hostel and
fortune granted us a ride in the form of the church pastor who just
happened to be checking on the place at the moment we walked up.

She gave us a ride to a laundrymat that had a grocery right nearby, so
all three of us got our chores done in a few hours. We called up a
taxi service to get a ride back once we were done. When we arrived
there was a substantial increase in the number of hikers at the
hostel, which I was surprised by because it felt like things had
really begun to thin out.

I hung out for a while, going through my food and organizing it, then
around 5 went to one of the outfitters I had visited earlier because I
was considering getting new shoes. I got there and tried several
different ones, really unsure about it all because of the price and
I've been hiking in boots and don't know much about shoes. I did end
up getting a pair, plus some new socks, and man do I notice the
difference. They're so much lighter then my boots were. Can't wait to
get back on the trail and really put them to the test. I'll be mailing
my boots back tomorrow, and I'll be curious to see how heavy the box is.

At 7:30ish Pistol, The Crusher, Hotfoot, and I went down to get pizza
at a place called Doughboy's, but not before going back to the pie
place where we each got a mini pie for 6 bucks. Don't let the word
mini fool you though, these things are dense. Anyway, the pizza was
really good, probably the best I've had on this trip so far. Afterward
we went back up to the hostel and hung out as more and more hikers
kept piling in. This place is getting crowded! It was kind of funny,
someone put in a Sublime CD in the boombox while we were hanging out,
which is not an album you'd expect to find at a church. Anyway, I'm
off to bed. Very tired. After a stop in at the post office tomorrow
morning it's back to the trail for me. And I'll finally be out of
Pennsylvania!

Total miles: 1284.4