AT Hike on PA Section 8
Day 1 - Peter's Mountain - PA 225 to The Doyle
To earn the KTA Young Hiker Award all the boys needed was 17 miles more to complete 25 on the same trail in one year. The boys had a little more than 8 miles on the AT from a fun over-nighter back on Memorial Day weekend. We decided to do PA Section 8 plus a little walk through Duncannon and that would satisfy it.
We split the section in half and started by hiking South on The AT toward Duncannon from The Rt. 225 road crossing.
We stopped to enjoy the vista at the first power line cut about 1 mile in.
Carrying no tents,
sleeping bags or cooking gear - packs were light, but breaks were still a
plenty. 
We climbed the rocks at the next power line cut and took a break to eat. While we stood in the warm breeze enjoying the views a beautiful Bald Eagle flew over. Janice got a couple of good photos, but unfortunately he didn't hang around. Cody with a future in greeting cards reflected, "we should cherish this moment." He headed up river and we moved on, inspired by the chance sighting.
Janice was leading and setting a good tempo when all of a sudden I heard her saying, "go back" and pushing the boys back toward me. She had nearly stepped on a Timber Rattler. He wasn't happy at all that we had disturbed his mid-trail tanning session and only after a lot of stick poking did he finally clear the trail. Beautiful snake. As we continued on we heard another rattler shake his tail in the underbrush just off the trail. We obviously had intruded again so we made our way past quickly.
The ruins of the Berkheimer Farm mule barn is a pretty place to take a break before crossing the river. This old barn apparently burned some time in the early 1900's.
I climbed around on the rocks while Janice got some nice shots of the boys.
Still warm and breezy, the sun was setting so we hit the trail down to the Susquehanna River.
As we descended, we scared yet another snake. Not sure what this little one was, but it was so startled it darted across the trail and fell 5 or 6 feet to rocks below. I was afraid it was injured, but it eventually gained its composure and continued its escape through the rocks. I was hearing R.E.M., "Egypt was troubled by the horrible asp...". Egypt? Heck just come to the AT in PA, they seem to be every where!
Down off Peter's Mountain, we crossed the railroad tracks, The Susquehanna, The Juniata and strolled through Duncannon to meet our trusty chauffeur (my dad) outside The Doyle to shuttle us back to our car. (That's not my dad above - that's a shovel man in somebody's front yard in Duncannon - pretty cool).
Day 2 - Peter's Mountain - PA 225 to PA 325/Clark's Creek
Day 2 was different. Janice's sister Donna helped us to spot a car at the Clark's Creek parking area along 325. We also decided to try something new to all of us by looking for 3 geocaches located along the trail. With 9 miles ahead of us we said goodbye to Donna and the boys at the PA 225 road crossing and hit the trail. This time we headed north on the AT.
We dropped our day packs and had some fun on the rocks at the power line cut. No snakes today...unfortunately no Bald Eagles either.
We were making pretty good time and before we knew it we arrived at Table Rock and the location of the first geocache we hoped to find. It's called Appalachian Trio: Table Rock and it's located just off of NPS land. The last time I was here I was having lunch on a trail work trip with my SATC friends. I had no idea there was a geocache in the vicinity. We searched what seemed like forever. We had all looked in the spot we believed was ground zero. I looked again and found it without even knowing it. Yep, the camouflage was pretty good. We signed the log - victorious with our first find and we were off to find another one.
We paid a visit to The Peter's Mountain Shelter. The boys took a short break in the new shelter. At the old shelter Nathan found some silly person's wine and note that they left, signed "any questions, ask Mike". The next cache was up the trail so we pushed on.
The next cache was on a rock outcrop just up the trail - Appalachian Trio: Peters Mtn. Our GPS sent over the rocks and back again. It wasn't really the GPS as much as it was me being a geocaching rookie. Eventually we found it. This one wasn't a micro-cache like the first one. It was a container with fun stuff in it and we picked up our first travel bug - Betty Boot. With Betty Boot hitching a ride we hit the trail with one more cache and a few more miles to cover before dark.
We passed by the junction with The Victoria Trail. The sign needs to be fixed. Last year Nathan and Cody lead a Webelos hike up that trail. The sticks were still in place and undisturbed where Cody had demonstrated the design of the different types of camp fires. Cool - gotta' keep moving the suns going down.
We finally reached the last geocache on the day - Appalachian Trio: Happy Hiking! This one took real team work and Cody came up with the goods! We signed the log took our picture with the cached camera and headed out quite happy with our 3 finds as new geocachers.
We raced with sundown and made it to the car about 10 minutes later than I had planned, but the sun was still up. Cody and Nathan had done it - more than 17 miles in 2 days and over 25 miles on the AT in 2006! Congratulations! to the young hikers!!
