Summary Random campsite 1256.8 Wind Gap, PA 1278.2 Total miles 21.4 Grant did indeed leave early, though it was light out when he left so he must not have made the 3:30 wakeup. We packed up camp at 8:30 and had to fill up on water since, according to the Guthooks app, it was the last reliabke water for thirty miles. So, there it was, five liters, eleven extra pounds for the climb out of Lehigh river. The climb out of Lehigh river was the first time in PA that there was a significant uphill in a boulder stack. It was slow going, but afterwards we had five miles of flat along a ridgeline. There were a ton of blackberry and raspberry bushes along the ridge that Grant had texted us about when he warned us about the Lehigh River climb. Though, for the first mile all the bushes were empty, which we assumed were due to Grant, the berry monster.
After walking down the ridge for a couple hours we stopped for lunch at an overlook and called Papa Bruce for his birthday. Afterwards, sadly, the gentle terrain came to an abrupt end. The rocks started and wouldn't let until we made it to Wind Gap.
We had been making good time, and hoping we would make it to Wind Gap for dinner and have a night in a motel. The rocks started destroying our feet again. Tyler's morale fell pretty low on the rocks. Emily broke down into tears a few times. We figured we should just force ourselves to take another zero to heal our feet and morale before we leave PA in 16 more miles beyond Wind Gap.
We finally made it to Wind Gap and ran into Monty waking down the road. The three of us headed to the Beer Stein together for a seat and food. Monty wanted to head down the trail a couple more miles, but we had some food and few beers first. Monty, of course, cheered us up. We headed down to the Red Carpet Inn afterwards, where we were shown to a basement room with no windows. But, frankly, that was fine since we had had enough moonlight, sunlight, rain, wind, and nature to last a lifetime already. Probabaly, we would be able to actually sleep in for recovery. Maybe a zero without any distraction.
