News and Views

I spent the last 10 days in the far east — New York and Pennsylvania. The main event was a four-day hike in the Pennsylvania “wilderness”, but I also got to meet Jennifer’s family and ride with Dale on his delivery route (twice!).

It was great to finally meet Louis, Vinnie, Carmen and Lucy, after hearing so much about them. They are an energetic bunch, and could tire out a marathon hiker in a short time! They’ll only be in Buffalo a few more months. Once Jenny finishes her degree they will be moving out of their little house in the city.

It was lots of fun riding with Dale on his route. He knows all the pharmacists on his route by name, and they seem to all know and like him. I learned how to keep delivery records, and we had some good talks on the way. And on the weekend we drove through Cuba and saw my childhood haunts again, and then made a quick trip to Niagara Falls. It never fails to impress. Here’s Dale:

(Note: To see larger images, Right-Click the picture and select “View Image”.)

The big event was the four day hike in Pennsylvania. We went to Sproul State Forest in North Central Pennsylvania. Karen drove up from Pittsburgh and met us at the town of Renovo the night before we began.

I was worried after reading Dale’s blogs about hiking in the east. It seemed like there was lots of mention of rain and water on the trail. Having hiked only in the west before, I wasn’t very familiar with these conditions, and it didn’t sound like much fun. But I figured we would probably be lucky and hit a dry spell. I was wrong. Boy, was I wrong!

Every day of hiking, within 1/2 an hour I began to feel moisture in my socks. Within an hour or so my socks were wet enough to wring out, and they stayed that way the rest of the day. On two nights we were able to somewhat dry our shoes by a camp fire, but on the first night we couldn’t find enough dry kindling to start a fire, so the next morning there was nothing to do but put on soggy shoes.

Here’s one of the lucky nights we got a fire going. Notice the shoes around the fire.

We crossed about 40 bodies of water. About 6 of those had some kind of bridge, which made it easy. Here’s Dale crossing such a bridge:

About 25 times we were able to hop across a stream or creek on logs or stones, though this was dangerous because everything was very slippery.

About 6 to 8 times (it varied between us) we had to take our shoes off and wade across in our Crocs. Here’s Karen doing just that:

Here’s another creek:

And worst of all, there were a few times, especially on the last day, when we ended up wading through a swamp in our shoes. After a while you just give up trying to avoid the water. The goal then becomes to minimize the amount of pants that are wet by choosing the shallower spots.

The capper came Sunday morning. Saturday evening we went to bed with a light rain falling. It continued off and on all night, sometimes heavier. In the morning I heard a tent unzip, and then shortly later Karen called out, “It snowed!” It sure had. We packed up our wet gear and started the final slog out.

Here’s what the cars looked like when we finally got back.

From this description it sounds like we had a terrible time, miserable throughout. But that’s not true. I actually had a wonderful time. I couldn’t have asked for better hiking companions, always cheerful and ready to do more than their share of the work. And the challenges made the experience an adventure.

Karen was a little bit supercilious about her abundance of dry socks, but I didn’t complain when she lent me a bowl to eat out of and made most of the meals.

Dale was so observant, pointing out that we were hiking on an old railway, or naming the different trees. We could have been hiking with a ranger.

I might have enjoyed it even more if my feet had been dry, but that’s a small price to pay for a few great days in the wilderness.