Samwise Hikes the Appalachian Trail! - Trail Journal -
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July 6, Darlington campsite - mile 1119

We've got our own, private campsite along the trail tonight, seven miles outside of Duncannon where we are headed in the morning. There is another shelter about 3 miles up the trail, but there's a big hill to climb between here & there plus my knees are so sore, I could scream tonight. In fact, my whole body is hurting & I've come to realize that it's time to take a zero day. It's been over a month since I took one, which isn't a particularly smart thing to do. Muscles get micro-tears in them every day from all this walking, & if I walk every day, they never heal.

So Doreen & I have altered plans a bit. She was going to hike with me for 10 days, up to Port Clinton, where I had a zero day planned. But since I'm taking one in Duncannon instead, she has no real reason to sit around for a day with me, twiddling her thumbs, so is planning to call her husband tomorrow to see if he can drive up to get her then. In fact, I'm hoping that perhaps Tony can also drive up & spend the weekend with me, since it's only about 2 hours away.

Today had some of the most unusual hiking I've yet done. For about 12 miles north of Boiling Springs, we hiked through the Cumberland Valley, which is pretty well flat as a pancake as it winds through dairy farms, corn, wheat & soybean fields (some spread with manure) & lots of berry patches! We enjoyed multitudes of mulberries, blackberries & raspberries today and Doreen has scrapes all over her arm to show for it.

We also saw three ground hogs today at very close range. I never knew how cute those little guys were! I think it was the Pennsylvania Turnpike we were crossing on a foot bridge, when we saw two of them playing below in a grasssy pasture area. Within seconds, they spotted us up there & both made a dash for their burrows. Other than that, however, Pennsylvania seems a bit short on wild life. We have rearely seen anything this past week, except for a few snakes & a couple deer.