September 22nd, 2018, Pennsylvania
After breakfast I said goodbye to Omega and her cat, MooMoo.
The trail started up on a ridge for a few hours then dropped down to a series of farm fields and road crossings. One field I crossed had two beautiful horses grazing in it, plus a man on a tractor cutting the grass.
Then in mid afternoon the trail passed through the town of Boiling Springs. It looked like a nice, quaint little town in great shape. There was an Appalachian Trail Conservancy office in town, right along the trail.
I wished I had allowed some time to wander around the town but was already feeling tired today and decided to sit for a while next to a pond full of ducks and geese. It was right in town and people walking passed me, children played, and a couple kids waded in the clear water.
The late afternoon dragged on and I figured I needed some more rest. I planned to stop a bit short today as soon as I could get water and find a decent place to stop. I reached a good site around 5:30pm and would have reached it much sooner but spent at least 30 minutes talking to Jacqueline, a lady of Jamaican heritage, on the trail. She was day hiking and stopped me to ask questions. It turns out she knew quite a lot about the AT and takes an interest in talking to hikers. She wants to do the whole trail herself someday.