THE ADVENTURES OF PLATY AND THE GANG
2009 North Country Trail in Pennsylvania
(click on the pictures for a larger view)
We arrived in Pennsylvania on 5/3 and stayed at
Rose Point
Campground where we left off last year. Adele and John arrived the next
day and the hiking started on 5/5 in Wampum, PA.
The trail was in good shape and because it was early in the
season there weren't many bugs nor undergrowth to contend with.
Of
course Judy biked whenever there was a road walk section.
This area included McConnells
Mill State Park and Moraine
State Park and had pretty good trail. 
Adele had to return home and
Judy had some road sections to do before reaching the Allegheny National
Forest.
Let's
talk about bridges a bit... There are several types of bridges you
can encounter o the trail. Nicely built wooden bridges like the one on the
left and some not so nice like the one on the right.
As
you can see from the next picture it was definitely in need of some help after a
tree fell on it. 
Sometimes they are just above the water level.
And sometimes just below water level.
Sometimes there's no bridge at all.
Adele
returned for a few more days to hike in the Allegheny
National Forest. They expected the trail to be nice in this
area. WRONG!! It was as if the trail had been built a few years ago
and then forgotten . I hiked in to meet them one day. As the left
picture shows, The trail was half way decent when I started. After
about a mile I came to an area where I lost the trail twice, and I had a
GPS. After about another 1/2 mile they finally contacted me by cell
phone. I waited and they finally met me.
They had been in saplings, under growth and blow downs for
miles. Blazes were very widely spaced and if the tree it was on had fallen
or you missed one, you were "lost" and had to search to find the
trail. This made for slow and perplexing hiking.
I
took a couple of pictures of interesting blazes along the trail. One was
hanging from a twig and the other was wedged in the fork of a tree.
Adele
left again after a couple of days. Judy tried hiking but became frustrated
by the trail conditions. She decided to bike around some trail
sections. Especially after we read a report about a couple of hikers and
their dogs that a few days before had to be rescued in one of the sections after
losing the trail and getting lost. They made their way to the lake shore,
started a fire and were found by the fire department rescue
boat. 
She arrived at the New York State border on 5/29, completing the 300 miles in Pennsylvania.
We then moved to the eastern end of the trail at the Vermont
border and will work our way back west. The eastern end of the trail
through the Adirondack
Park has no trail and is entirely on roads so she will be biking this 148
miles.