6/14 Another Long Rocky Day

23.8 hiked today, 1279.2 miles N, 894.8 miles left
Church of the Mountain Hostel, Delaware Water Gap, PA

I woke today refreshed and ready to hike. My feet are still a little sore from the late night push but they still work. I managed to pack up in about 20 minutes and was hiking by 7:30. The water at the shelter was a long way down a side trail but someone had left a 4 gallon water cube sometime in the past. Hikers have been filling it up and hualing it back to shelter to share so I managed to save myself the long hike. Thank you water hauler and cube buyer!
Caps got out shorty after me and caught up at a water stop and we hiked together for the rest of the day.
The first stop was Wind Gap. The town is a little spread out but I found the 1.6 mile walk to and from the grocery to be pleasent and relaxing after spending the first couple hours of the day on the PA rock. First we passed the post office where I had a lot of business to take care of. There was the food resuppply box from my family with a heathy load of oatmeal/buttersctoch/rasin bronwny like thingies. They really are much better than I make them sound and I ate far too many of them today to free space in my food bag. I passed these around to the other hikers collecting mail while I packed the rest of the food up. Then I opened a package for Marjorie. She had sent me a very nice letter and something that will spice up my life for a long while to come. There were small baggies of tomato powder, jalopeno powder, crushed red pepper, and finally Vulcan's Fire Salt. I can't wait to see what I can do with all that! My last box was the extra gear I had sent myself from Port Clint!
on. I grabed my tarp out of it and sent the rest to Dana. I love the hammock but for now I think I will go without it for now as I am finding it a real bother to set up, I usally stay in shelters, and it adds over a pound to my base weight. My pack seems almost empty without it.
Next we went to the supermarket in town that was aother .8 miles from the trail where Caps and I met Shadow. He had thru-hiked in 2004 and was comming back to redo some sections. He is an exceptionally nice person who we enjoyed hiking with most of the rest of the day. I got out of the market spending only $4.31 for fixings to make four dinners. :)
Near the market was a K-Mart and I saw they had 2GB memory cards for my camera for $20 so I went to pick one up. When I bought the card the recipt was supposed to have a $5 mail-in rebate to bring the price down to $20 but it didn't print. As a result I went to the customer service desk where they just gave me the $5 bucks. That was the quickest mail-in rebate I have ever had. One last note about K-Mart, they had about a half dozen free internet access terminals.
With all that done Caps, Shadow, and I started the long walk back to the trail. PA continued to live up to it's reputation and remained rocky for most of the rest of the day. It was a lot more pleasent doing it with a couple people to talk to. We talked about our lives, Caps educated us about mushrooms which, as a recent biology graduate, he had a lot of intrieging info on. Shadow and I talked a lot about ultralight camping techniques with Caps who had some pack weight he wanted to cut.
At Kirkridge Shelter Shadow stayed behind as he was meeting friends in Delaware Water Gps in a couple of days and didn't need to be there yet. Caps and I finished of the day with push into Delaware Water Gap at about 8:15 PM. On the ridgeline before the gap we were treated to many views of the Delaware snakeing through the steep cliffs of the mountains. As with the Potomic I have spent so much time studing these rivers in history classes over the years that it is almost as if I already know them and I wonder if they are beautiful only because of this. Either way I took some photos from outlooks that I think will come out well.
In town we found out we were a couple hours late for a massive church dinner for hikers. Everyone at the hostel was in a food coma or out enjoing live jazz at the club next door. Delaware Water Gap, I found out, is a hot spot of Jazz and many of the other hikers took advantage of that. I wanted to attend to my todo list so I could get out of town earlier tomrrow and to compound that I was still geting drowsey when the sun set. I made myself mexican food for dinner and added some of the ground jalopeno powder to it which improved the flavor a lot.
I feel bad that I am missing all this town has to offer but I am just to tired from all that unpleasent rock.