Agile Trekker: PA Appalachian Trail - Section 5 PA 183 to Port Clinton Railroad Station

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
4/27/2018	14.8 miles		1,154'

Map: Appalachian Trail Guide, Pennsylvania plus map that comes with the guide
Parking: Parked first car at Port Clinton Railroad Station. Parked second car at PA 183
Directions: PA 183 to Port Clinton Railroad Station

Our original plan for today was to do PA 309 to PA 248, but this includes the "knife edge". Today's forecast was for rain, so we decided the knife edge should be done on a dry day.

We didn't spend enough time studying Guthook this morning. The first issue is that someone commented not to use Apple Maps to get to the railroad station parking area. We did use Apple Maps, which took us down a dead end road in the town of Auburn & then told us to walk. Well, our parking lot was in a different town - Port Clinton. So, we just told my phone to take us to Port Clinton - I think from there we turned onto Broad Street and then Railroad Ave.

Then we also had a parking issue at our second stop. There was a no parking sign where Guthook said the parking was, but we found a state gamelands lot .2 miles down the road. From there we walked up to a forest road, turned right on it, and walked until we hit the AT. We turned right on the AT.

There was steady rain when we started out. Glen hates hiking in the rain. An hour into our hike I tripped and fell forward. My shin came directly down on a big pointy rock. My shin swelled up and was bleeding a lot. Bleep. We stopped & looked for a bandage. No bandages in my first aid kit. I did have medical tape & duct tape though, so I found a clean wool sock and taped it to my shin to stop the bleeding. It was itchy, but the compression felt good. My leg hurt though. I started wondering if it would be possible for Trek to help prevent me from falling so much. A standing assistance dog ;)

It stopped raining after that, but my feet were sopping wet all day due to the wet trail. I did find some waterproof gloves in the car which I brought along, so at least I had dry hands which was a morale booster. The temps today were cool, not cold. Woohoo. Some parts of today had dirt trails, some parts were rock fields - today's terrain was better than yesterday. The trail was mostly level until the end, where we had a steep downhill into Port Clinton. Glen was using my trekking poles today. It took forever to do the downhill to the railroad station. I'm really slow on downhills.