July 5th

     Well PA you did it, my feet really hurt. This entire last 80 or so miles has been completely filled with inescapable sharp rocks. I feel like I've had my best days on the trail and my worst days on the trail so far in this last week. The first stretch right after we left Boiling Springs the heat was just ridiculous. I had a really bad case of a heat rash that went all up and down my legs. It felt very similar to a very bad sunburn but would kind of go away if I went out of the heat for a while or put water on it. We spent a night in Duncannon  at the Doyle Hotel, normally a pretty gross hotel but really nice for hikers since the rooms were only $25 a night. The hole place was filled with hikers and it was pretty fun. After we left Duncannon we crossed the Susquehanna River and got up onto a ridge line where we would be hiking for the next hundred miles or so.
     We did our now longest day of hiking just a little while ago. We did a total of about 38 miles, 34 on the trail and another 4 coming in and out of town. I arrived at a really nice view at about 4:30am and decided to set up camp there on rock overlooking the PA countryside. The next morning however I had to get up really early at about 6:30 am because the sun was shining right down on my and starting to cook me on the rock. That day was pretty miserable, the rocks were horrible and I started to suffer from sleep exhaustion. I still ended up hiking about 17 miles that day however.
     I had one of the best 4th of Julys I have ever had out here on the trail. I hiked out of town up this mountain, which was one of the hardest climbs that I have had on the trail so far. I had to use my hands to climb the mountain and kind of did a little rock climbing, hikers call this a "rock scramble". After we got to the top of the mountain we had a couple mile walk along the ridge line of the mountain which didn't have any trees on it so we were able to see down into the valley the whole way. We came across this spot where we decided to camp that someone had made a bunch of seats out of the stone that was all laying around there as well as a fire pit. We set up there and were able to have a birds eye view of about 25 different firework shows all over the valley.
     The next day we hiked down into Wind Gap, PA and met up with the Dipaolos who hosted us last night and have been taking really good care of us here. We will be finally leaving PA today once we cross the Delaware River and will be getting into New Jersey.

-Turbo Zero