I’m in a shelter, eating a loaded Sicilian pizza and drinking a beer. There is a 10 foot wide hexagonal skylight overhead brightening up the joint and I am not wet or cold. Is this on the AT or not? You decide!

Ok, I’ll make it easy. This is the wonderful 501 shelter, 24 miles south of Port Clinton, PA. There is a local pizza place that delivers to within ⅒ of a mile and after a day of beautiful hiking, life is good! I’m here with the same crew plus Chestnut, a repeat thru-hiker.

It is amazing what I’ve come to accept as normal. The rocks are still annoying and perhaps one mile out of five is rocky. The poison ivy is no longer content growing on the sides of the trail so now it’s taking over. Hiking is at times a brutally ugly ballet, processed at 2.5 miles per hour without contacting much ivy or breaking many ankles. Amazingly few of us have gotten ivy rashes and I haven’t found a single dot on me.

The views have been somewhat limited to occasional glimpses of the farming towns on either side of the ridges we hike on. There was a cool detour today through a construction site on Rt. 81, Not often do our 2 x 6 inch white blazes get replaced by a day-glow orange and black construction sign saying “Appalachian Trail Detour!” Hoplite and I hiked together today and had to push ourselves not to stay and watch the big machines play for too long.

Real nice hiking with Hoplite. He may be the most mature 23 year-old I have ever met, having just wrapped up a degree in Chemistry. We had a really enjoyable conversation today about religion, a topic not often discussed in depth. It is still a topic I struggle with. Hoplite is a devout Christian who had some well-expressed thoughts on the subject.