PA route 183 - Northbound mile 1198

This post is from June 29, 2015.  The GPS tracking of this hike can be found at:

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/818965983

Today was a difficult day.  The most difficult 20 miles I have done in some time.

It started off easy enough with a crossing of the Swatara Creek over this lovely now-pedestrian only crossing:

The 20 miles were difficult today because this part of the AT in Pennsylvania was really earning its moniker of 'Rocksylvania' today.  This photo is the trail (see white blaze in distance):

This, and the previous 2 days' hiking has been almost exclusively on top of well-defined ridges that seem to run parallel with each other.  I can spend a whole day moving in a straight line on top of one of these ridges.  There were a lot of ridges in NC/TN but they were sharper - sometimes no more than a meter wide, and did not consist of the rubble that is common in this area.  Being on the ridge did afford occasional dramatic views of the countryside, though:

These mountains served as a kind of 'early warning system' during the French and Indian wars in the middle of the 1700's.  There were a series of forts built at strategic locations (gaps) in the mountains where the English soldiers could detect a major movement of Indians preparing to attach settlements down in the farm country (see previous picture and imagine it 270 years ago).  One was in Swatara Gap (where I started today) and another was about 400 meters from the end of the hike today.  This monument is deep in the woods and few people not hiking the AT would ever see it:

I also have something weird going on with my left lower calf (not the one over the artificial ankle).   Yesterday my right foot kicked up a big branch and threw it against the back of my left calf with considerable force.  The branch broke and I felt pain and there was a small amount of bleeding.  This, in itself, is not that unusual for me on this hike.  I get bruises and scratches all the time.  Today, however, I woke up with a strange skin rash over a big bruised area where this blow occurred.  Tonight, that is extremely sore and strangely the skin irritation is more painful than the bruise.  The skin feels like a second degree burn.  We don't know what to make of it.  Could the branch have been of some kind of poisonous wood?  A simultaneous spider bite coinciding with the blow from the branch?  Hopefully it is better in the morning.

Addendum on 6/30/15:


My sister heard about this from my blog post and told me to be on the lookout for cellulitis (very dangerous, spreading infection that can kill you if not checked.  It is usually from staph or strep).  Anyway, it seemed to be spreading with long thin red lines going up on the back of my calf to my knee.   So, we went to the Good Samaritan Hospital Emergency room in Lebanon, PA.  We spent about 5 hours getting assessed and antibiotic IV and then the prescription of oral antibiotics that I need to take for 10 days.

These are shots of what my leg looked like in the ER last night:

So the good news is that the few days' break from hiking that this will enforce hopefully coincides with the birth of my daughter's baby.  We have now driven to DC and are waiting close by her as her contractions get stronger.   Pray for her, the baby, and us.