6/8 The Big Climb

6.1 hiked today, 1209 miles N, 965 miles left
Windsor Furnace Shelter

The day started with a lazy morning. Dana is still living in CST standard time so I woke up about before her and went downstairs to pig out on the continental breakfast. It was OK although it lacked fresh fruit. Dana joined me an hour later for breakfast. After that we cleaned up, packed up, and headed out. We carefully darted across the busy highway to get to the Cabelas in front of the hotel. There we browsed a little more. It had been an hour since I last ate so I got the munches and we checked out the cafeteria upstairs. I avoided their impressive collection of big game burgers and got a salad and slice of disappointing pizza. Cabelas will give thru-hikers a ride to the trail if they have enough people available and this what we did to get to Port Clinton.
The shuttle dropped us off at about 12:45. The clerk at the post office takes her lunch break from 12:30 to 2:00 so we had some time to kill. I had passed through the rail-yard on the way into town yesterday. We went back to look at the displays of massive hunks of coal from around PA and the restored train cars they had parked there. On a door frame a short distance away we found a massive luna moth, about 2.5" in size, that was pastel green. I took some pics as it was amazing to look at. We went back to the downtown and poked through a old fashioned candy and nut shop and bough some fudge and small candies. Dana got a great peanut butter fudge and mine was an OK Orangecile. When the post office opened I mailed the excess gear we did not need on to Wind Gap and we headed off.
I retraced .8 miles of the trail from yesterday and showed Dana how to identify poison ivy along the way. Then we started the climb. Dana has been working out so she did a lot better than many of the people starting on Springer Mountain. Still a 1000' climb is a shock for someone living in flat Chicago and so we took it slow and easy. Also the 90º temps made things even worse with both of us soaked in sweat.
After we got to the top of the ridge line we speed up making it to camp in a pleasantly amount of time before sunset. Thus far on this thru-hike I have yet have a shelter site to myself but tonight Dana and I were pleasantly surprised to have the place to ourselves.
We had a little trouble with dinner as I put the stove on a wobbly spot accidentally causing a pot to tip and none of my food was labeled but finally we sat down to a hot meal.
After that the night has been mostly uneventful. Dana's eyes and ears are great at spotting all sorts of wild life around the campsite I would have normally missed.