Day 13 (July 5th) - MOVIN' ON UP DAY

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."
-Lao Tzu

Start: Doyle Hotel
Finish: Wind Gap, PA
Today: 0 mi
Total: 123 mi

We woke and had a nice relaxing morning since we planned on letting Heather's knees rest until about 1 PM. With the morning off we decided to breakfast right at the diner rather than having a couple of candy bars. With pancakes bigger than my head, we knew we made the right decision! While we ate, I looked over the maps and saw we had another five days of tough PA rocks to get through. The doctor encouraged Heather and I to skip this section for now and come back to in the fall to save her knees and possibly the whole trip! I was beginning to agree with the doctor.

The worst part of skipping 100 miles of trail until the fall was that we would be leaving a lot of our trail friends. One such friend, who we met at the end of a long day, was sitting at a picnic table in front of Deerlick shelter. We sat with him and introduced ourselves. This older gentleman, with the long gray beard, had and the slow thoughtful way about him. He told us that he was from Texas and continued, in a stoic manner, that he goes by "Hot Feet." Hmmmm... Seeing our surprised and confused faces he lifted his leg displaying is hot pink crocs and explained "the only ones in my size." Hot Feet is great person and before long we all felt like old friends.

Hopefully we'll see him and some of our other trail friends we've met up north. We took a shuttle from Duncannon to Wind Gap. As we drove 100 miles north in the car the theme songs to the Jeffersons entered my head. "Moving on up..." We arrived at Wind Gap a bit late to make it to the first shelter (especially since the next 15 miles was one of the worst sections of rocks - PA the "best" for last for north-bounders). So we stayed in a cheap motel and gave Heather's knees (and mine) more time to rest!

~DADDY LONG LEGS