Kevin's AT Thru Hike

Day 88, Sunday, 6/12 – Genie and Splitzy cooked up French Toast for breakfast. Cooking meals is a nice change of pace from always eating out while in towns. I’m also happy to save a bit of money.

After breakfast, I went over to the laundromat to clean all of my gear. All the clothes got washed, including my down puffy jacket. I also washed the down quilt. Everything went through 2 wash cycles.

As the gear was in the wash, Sprite came in! I haven’t seen Sprite in about 500 miles. She had to get off trail for a few weeks to recover from an achilles injury. Once she got better she shuttled up trail so that she would still be hiking around the same group of people that she started with. Her plan is to complete the skipped section after summiting Katadhin, which is the Northern terminus of the AT in Maine.

When I was drying the quilt, I got lucky I didn’t ruin the gear. There is a clip on the quilt that hooked itself to the revolving drum of the dryer. As the dryer drum rotated, the quilt got very twisted up. I’m actually surprised the fabric didn’t tear. I’m very glad it didn’t. Once I realized this happened, I removed all the clips from the quilt, which I should have done from the get-go.

Halftime and Birthday Sandwich were also doing laundry. Birthday Sandwich used his tent ground cloth as clothing to remain decent in public.

While the gear was drying, I went to a pizza joint with Half Time, Birthday Sandwich, and Sprite. I got an Italian sub and a slice of pizza. It hit the spot. I followed lunch up with resupply at the local outfitter. The outfitter had a hostel in back, so I spent some time throughout the day hanging with the other hikers in the hostel.

Since the quilt is down, it took forever to dry. I had to run the dryer on low heat for hours. I didn’t mind, I had some writing to catch up on from yesterday’s hike. When laundry was done, I dropped my clothes and food off in the basement of DAG (Duncannon Assembly of God), where I’m staying again tonight.

Dog Fish, Half Time, Broadway, Genie, Splitzy, Sprite, Birthday Sandwich, Didgeridoo, and I all found our way back to the Italian restaurant at dinner time. The restaurant had a large outdoor patio and a jukebox, so we had everything we needed for a dance party. I need more dance parties in my life.

We headed back to the DAG at 8:30 to find the place packed. There were only 7 of us last night, and there’s 24 of us tonight. We’re all sleeping on the floor, and it’s covered with hikers. I had a bowl of cereal, ate some veggies, socialized with other hikers, and got ready for bed.