Camping after Smith Gap Rd 1270.2

In the morning we hiked into Palmerton, a small city located in the north of Pennsylvania. There I had the passport sent and also the replacement dry sack from sea2summit. Unfortunately only the passport arrived, the sack will be forwarded to Connecticut - this time I'm trying to make sure that it is there by the time we arrive :)
Afterwards we could finally do our laundry, the woman that was working there was so friendly and helpful. She even gave us soap for free. Before we went back on the trail we went to an italian restaurant for the lunch menu. But the food was way too less for two hiker hunger driven souls. So we ordered a large pepperoni pizza to go and almost ate all of it before we were out of town. We saw someone hitchhiking and getting a ride pretty quickly, so we tried it ourselves and fifteen minutes later we were already back at the trailhead.

So we started conquering that beast of a rock pile at noon. Which is probably the worst time as you don't have any cover from the trees... Additionally there are other things that made it hard to get up there:
- Checking that there is no rattle snake where you want to place your hand
- the 40+ pounds backpack
- half of an oily pepperoni pizza

Dehydration was an issue for me today... It was supposed to be a 17 mile stretch without water. So we knew what was coming and Julia did quite fine even though I've hydrated the whole morning with about 4 liters and carried another 3 liters with me... We've been told that there is often water at a gap after five miles but by the time we arrived there, there wasn't any. My water was half empty and even after drinking my throat still felt dry. So I was panicking a bit and asked at a parked car for some water who gave me a small half full bottle. After a thru hiker who went to town gave us another liter I started to feel better.Leggi altro