| Mile | 1212.1 |
| Miles Since Last Update | 14.5 |
| Day | 93 |
Still very hot, still very buggy, still lots of rocks, but at least the day was short. Was having trouble sleeping last night due to immense pain, but as I was doomscrolling FarOut I found out some interesting info. Up until fairly recently, a lot of northern PA trail was just road walks. Older trail designers saw PA for what it is (a steaming pile of shit) and had the idea to just fast track thru it I guess. Then in the last couple decades, Instagram influencers or some group got together to complain that PA was too boring, so they threw a dozen or so blazes across shit like this:
and said “hey now you can go see all the 2 (two) views that PA has to offer.”
The more interesting part to me I guess is that some of these older paths still exist. By 7am I was drenched in sweat so I decided to commit to cheating and take an old forest service road that technically was part of the AT in the past. It was about the same number of miles, still brutally hot, but at least I got to walk on semi smooth gravel, almost like an actual trail would look like.
Got to Eagle’s Nest shelter at noon, tried to stay in the shade, popped a bunch of ibuprofen PM, and called it an early day. Tomorrow should be an easy descent into Port Clinton, but I’ll probably cheat thru another service road again as it is still going to be hot as fuck.