Camo and I hiked into Palmerton PA. Shirtless was hiking through to Leroy Smith, the next shelter north, and was gathering water from the piped spring at the Outerbridge shelter as we left. Sorry, but I neglected to recharge my phone overnight so I did not get any photos of the hike into Palmerton, but it was enjoyable. A moderately steep hike down, then a little road walking to the AT.
When the AT turns right to climb the mountain, Camo and I followed the blue blazed trail that ran on a shelf above the river and railroad tracks that afforded a very nice view, bounded by fencing along the cliff face to protect against rock falls. The main trail headed uphill but we followed the use trail down to a private service road indicated on AWOL's guide. We found an unoccupied guardhouse (being Sunday, not surprising) and the traffic gate fence was closed, but I found a gap we squeezed through. After a short walk to the main street, we sauntered past a lot of interesting homes and businesses, the post office, as well as a couple of "onion-domed" churches.
We got to Bert's restaurant shortly after opening at 8am, then had breakfast while waiting for extra staff to set us up at the hostel bunkroom in back. While eating our breakfasts (I had some delicious French Toast with butter and sausage), we chatted with another hiker, Traveler, who was forced off the trail to stay at the hostel while recovering from a cold. Both Camo and I paid our $25 hostel bill with our meal bill, then the staff got us settled in. We took hot showers, did our laundry (while I watched the movie Zodiac on DVD) then went down the street for Camo to pick up some supplies at the Country Harvest grocery store (I made a shopping list for Monday as I was staying an extra day to pick up my bounce box from the post office).
Since Camo was moving on Monday morning, I let him choose where to eat an early (3pm) dinner, and we ended up at the Palmerton Hotel (https://m.facebook.com/PalmertonHotel) as he heard great reviews of their hot wings. I had a classic Reuben and batter-dipped onion rings, both fantastic.
When we got back to the hostel (pictured), we had been joined by Tweaker (now sporting a black eye from a fight with the rocks), Penguin (who I met earlier, a big Pittsburgh Penguins fan), and Cosmo (who was heading south, and gave us a preview of the trail ahead). Penguin had the genius idea of bringing back two milkshakes from Bert's, so before they closed I went out to get a chocolate shake and spotted a full rainbow over the mountain we are to climb (pictured).
It was a nice little reunion with swapping trail anecdotes, and the hostel owner Tracy stopped in for a chat (pictured, on left with Cosmo and Tweaker seated - sorry for the blur) before we called it a night (hikers sack out after the sun sets).
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