Well here we are now in Duncannon, PA! Here at the notorious Doyle Hotel (Great food, a bar, but a dump. I can say dump because thats how the owner describes it. We love it.) we are at mile marker 1041 and nearing the half way point. The trail has been mostly gentle the last few hundred miles. Lots of rocks though. Luckily we have long legs which means fewer steps which means less chances to twist an ankle or stub a toe (which we still do frequently, just less frequently than our less lanky hiking companions). We've settled into our trail routine quite nicely by now. Just the other day I noticed we set up camp and cooked dinner with hardly a word spoken about the actual process- just normal conversation. I decided for my next post I'd run through a typical day for us on the trail just to give you a sense of what we do with all our time.
We wake up about 5:15. It takes us a couple minutes to get out of our sleeping bags, of course. Shawn gathers his things into his pack and gets out of the tent to make coffee. I stuff our sleeping bags into their stuff sacks, re-braid my hair, and put on some layers. Shawn usually puts a water bottle in the tent so I can take my vitamin and takes the rain fly off the tent- he carries that part. When I'm ready I push my pack out of the tent and clumsily climb out into the morning. (Its not really morning. Its pitch dark. The days are shorter now so we like to start early) The coffee is brewing by now and we take the tent down and get our breakfast out. Shawn usually has us a place set up to eat together. It's a picnic table on the best days, a big flat rock on good days, and on all other days its just his sleeping pad on the ground. Shawn pours our coffee (I get 4 oz, he drinks the other 12oz!) and we eat together in the bright, romantic, white light of our LED headlamps. Then we brush teeth, pack up, (I strip off a layer if I'm feeling brave) and head out.
We like to walk for about 2 hours at a time, 2 hours being the longest period of time a thru-hiker can go without a snack. We also like to have most of our miles done before lunch. So by about 1 pm we've done anywhere from 12 to 16 miles (the other day we did 18 by 1:08 !!) Lunch is just like breakfast- best-case scenario there is a picnic table, worst case, just the ground. We eat something on a tortilla- cheese, tuna, PB and honey or J. After lunch, we walk a few more miles and have at least 1 more snack before we make it to camp.
Once in camp, Shawn goes off to get water while I set up the tent and get out the food. I cook dinner, Shawn does the dishes, throws the bear line and hangs up our food. Depending on weather and insect life, we play cards either inside or outside of the tent (the picnic table/ no picnic table situation plays a factor here too). We like to eat M&Ms (usually the peanut variety) while we play. We've been keeping score in a rummy game since Maine and I'm winning with over 10,000 points! After cards we brush teeth and I write in my journal. We read our guide book to see what tomorrow's hike will be like and then it's lights out! (If the lights were even on. We've been known to regularly go to bed before dark- we see far more sunrises than sunsets)
And there you have it! A day in the life of a couple of thru-hikers. We are absolutely loving it!
