Our journey from Richmond Hill, Ga to Caladonia State Park in Pennsylvania was a beautiful drive up through 7 states. As we pulled into the park the sight became Spectacular.............our hiker Will, emerged shirtless from the middle of a large group of people who were gathered at the park shelter to celebrate someone's retirement. We witnessed another display of kindness from strangers who do not know our son, but because so many have a love and connection to hikers, they freely extend their hospitality.
The following hour was spent catching up and setting up our campsite in the park. Will scribed a note out to post on the trail for the other hikers............."DarkStar - at campsite #115 come by." Tanner took the note and posted it to a tree along the trail. Before the sun went down for the day we enjoyed the company of several hikers (Bowtie - Brian, Turkey & Thrasher - husband and wife from Georgia, Castore & Spatchula - two bums from Boston and DarkStar - our favorite hiker.) Prophet stayed for a little while but later departed to catch up with the Traveling Circus - a group of hikers you will hear more about later.
Our night was fantastic! Beth had planned an evening meal, breakfast and the next evening's meal and had bought groceries accordingly. What she failed to calculate accurately for were two very important things - A) how many would be joining us for dinner & B) how hungry these hikers would be. The evening meal consumed two nights worth of groceries and would have wiped out breakfast as well if we had cooked it. We decided to save what we could for the morning.
We had envisioned setting around the campfire listening to hiker stories that night but the weather didn't allow. Rain drove us all to a covered shelter where Beth downloaded all of Will's pictures. We all enjoyed a slide show presentation with narration provided by Will. Our laughter must have caught the attention of others as the park ranger came down to check on us.
We packed up and retired back to our site and huddled under Will's tarp and shortly ended our night with everyone turning in. We only thought the night was over. During the middle of the night, Tanner woke everyone up as he staggered around from tent to tent looking for a good place to hurl! He continued to barf everything he had eaten the past week. I am still surprised we all didn't join him in a campsite barf-o-rama. It did make interesting breakfast conversation the next morning.
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