Day 114: Off the rocks?

Today was awesome. Well, it started out rocky and crappy, but when we got to highpoint state park, everything changed.

Though awol had said that the highpoint park hq had vending machines, we were super disappointed to arrive to a building with none. But!, the Rangers inside said the local hiking club provides a fridge full of free sodas for thru hikers! Booyakasha!

Then, more great news from our descent off the high point memorial (yet another giant phallus) ridge. An elder hiker told me that this ridgeline we were hiking down was the end of a particular geological Era that was a coastline turned quartzite. These were the sharp unyielding rocks we had been hiking over since about Duncannon. But now the AT was heading over to a different, older geological era, the Precambrian. This, supposedly means less rocks.

On the way down, this news turned out to be seemingly true. We are now hiking in lowlands though, so we will see when we hit the next ridge.

For lunch, we hit up what is known as secret shelter. An unofficial shelter on private land. Unfortunately, we did not get to meet the owner, but we hear he is awesome and after he throughiked a long time ago he decided to just move right next to the AT and buy an 80 acre farm. The place was gorgeous.  I think he made the right life choice.

In the late afternoon we crossed a road and realized it led 0.5 miles to a bar. Ok, let's go get dinner. AWOL says they have great ribs.

we sat at the bar asking about prices for different beers and pretty much immediately a guy told us to get whatever we wanted, he got the first round. Then we ordered food and talked to our new beer buddy until the owner of the bar out of the blue came up to us and suggested we sit at the table on the back corner of the room. Hell be happy to bring our food and get us drinks there. We are pretty sure this was his way of saying y'all stink like rotten cheese, please go away. So we obliged. Later as the bar became packed with locals, and the owner talked up his ribs with us, we decided his intentions may have been a little less rude, that instead he was just making sure his friends and regulars had their bar stools available.  Whatever, we were happy in the corner taking in the scene and playing big buck hunter. A few days later, now that I'm writing this, we found out the same thing happened to other hikers, but the person was less nice about it, saying that other people had to be able to actually eat.

Eventually we realized we were not hiking out of town tonight, so we better go buy beer at t he store before they close and set up camp in the city park, which is hiker friendly. At the park, we drank beers with the main town employee, sorta a handy man for an entire township. He was fantastic and had apparently been instrumental in getting the town to be so hiker friendly. We finished the night with Becca riding the merry go round with some teen girls. Kinda ridiculous day huh?

We love Unionville NY.