We had planned on hitting the trail by 7am this morning, but we ended up sleeping in just a bit and not getting out until about 8. We had more boring trail, interspersed with tough, ankle-rolling rocky sections. The start of the day was a 9 mile hike down into the town of Port Clinton, PA. The descent from the ridge was very steep, especially the very end, and it was mainly a dirt and loose rock path, which meant we had to keep it under control to make sure we didn’t slip and tumble.
When we arrived in town we had one destination in mind, the Port Clinton Hotel. We weren’t planning on staying there, though they do have rooms available, we just wanted some food. I’ve got to hand it to this place… the food isn’t the best in the world, but it’s pretty decent, and they give you a lot of it. I had a buffalo chicken cheese steak sandwich, and it was massive. Bear Bell had a huge burger, we split some onion rings drizzled with hot sauce, had a basket of hand cut fries, and then rounded out the meal with a piece of strawberry cake. We both also enjoyed 2 Yuenglings each, as we’re only about 15 miles away from the brewery.
After lunch we just kind of sat outside the restaurant and commented on how full we got. It feels good to be full after being hungry all the time. We then visited the shop next door, a little place called the Peanut Shop. This place was great, we were literally big kids in a candy store. They had all kinds of candy, chocolate, gummies, trail mixes, and of course roasted peanuts. Even after our huge lunch we wanted everything in the place. We settled on some trail mix, gummie fruit slices, and some chocolate covered pretzels.
We spent a little time after the candy shop hanging outside the barber shop in town, which is a popular hiker stop. Unfortunately the barber closes early on Saturday, but we were lucky enough to chat with him for a few minutes before we started the walk out of town.
Of course, since we had such a profound loss of elevation to get into town, we naturally had to gain it all back, so we were greeted with a nice long rocky climb back up the ridge. Our original plan for the day was to only climb up to the first water source, fill up then set up camp early, but for some reason we decided to push on to the Windsor Furnace Shelter. When we were just about there, we decided to push on a bit further, and we ended up doing a total of 21.5 miles by the time we stopped.
We’re finally in the tent, and we can hear fireworks going off in many of the surrounding towns, but we cannot see any of them. We did have an absolutely incredible sunset though, which more than makes up for the lack of pyrotechnics. We’ve got yet another 20+ mile day planned for tomorrow, just mainly due to the spacing of shelters and water. We’re looking forward to Tuesday when we’re going to jump off trail for just 2 days, and we can finally get clean for a short while. It’s been a bit since we’ve done laundry or taken a proper shower…
