Day 94
Today we were going to have a long day, not just with distance but because of the heat and water situation. From our campsite, we had a climb up to Hawk Mountain. We met Tree Hugger and Tripping Yeti up at Dans Pulpit and hung out. Risky Business came up behind us and said he saw a huge rattlesnake in the trail. We didn’t see it, but he was right behind us! The ridgeline was rocky this morning and it took us longer than usual to go the miles. We got to Allentown Shelter and Duck Soup was there. He was overheated and decided to not go any further. Nokey and I took an hour and a half for lunch. I drank some Gatorade and I was exhausted. My sweat smelled like ammonia so I was worried about going on for the night. We felt better after the break, so headed on. We were planning to stop at Blue Mountain Summit Restaurant for a cold drink and some AC action. Turns out they were closed today according to the sign. We pouted for a bit, but headed onward toward Bake Oven Knob, the place in PA rumored to be the worst for rocks. We climbed up over the Knife Edge and Bear Rocks and our feet were killing us because of the rocks. We had a short walk on an old road before coming to the climb at Bake Oven Knob. We climbed and sweat and bled a little from our bug bites. We finally came to Bake Oven Knob shelter and it was a total dump - an original CCC shelter covered in graffiti and filled
With trash. We laughed at our bad luck and then had to walk over a mile for water for the night. I found us a good campsite up the hill from the shelter/dump and Turtle was there as well. It had been a long, hot day. We decided to go straight to bed and get up very early to avoid the hot sun in the morning. The photo is Nokey climbing the Knife Edge.