Waiting for Spring: Two sections of the Pennsylvania Appalachian Trail

This post will be a double hike bonus post: We have managed to hike both of the past two weekends, but I started a new job last week, so I didn't get a post up about the first one.

Two weekends ago, we went out with two friends and hiked a new (to us) section of the Pennsylvania Appalachian Trail (AT) from Shippensburg Pike to Pine Grove Furnace, with a side trip to Sunset Rocks. We were very lucky with the weather, considering how cold it has been. It was bright and sunny and probably in the 50s with little wind. This winter, that qualifies as a super warm day.

 Tom's Run Shelter. This was near the halfway point of our hike and it was where we had lunch. Pro tip: Make sure you put the memory card in the camera. I took some pictures on the first half of the hike, but the camera didn't have a card in it. Oh well. Anyway, it turns out that there used to be two shelters here, which we've seen elsewhere in Pennsylvania (sometimes one is labeled "snoring" and the other "non-snoring"). One of them was apparently burned down in 2013 by a careless hiker.

 Daffodils popping up near the shelter.

 An old chimney at the shelter.

 Just north of the shelter is the halfway point of the Appalachian Trail.

 We took a side trip up to Sunset rocks. It was a steep climb followed by a really pretty little scramble through some rocks and pine trees.

 Michael out on Sunset Rocks.

 Fold lines on a boulder

 Ferns on the rocks.

At the end of our trip, we visited the Appalachian Trail Museum. The building is an old grist mill in Pine Grove Furnace State Park. The museum opened just a few years ago, but it has a nice little exhibit on the AT. One kind of cool thing: They have a sign from the summit of Katahdin in Maine, which is the end of the trail. It turns out that it is the sign that was on the summit when we hiked it in 2009. It was replaced in 2010.

This was a really nice, interesting hike and was about 11 miles, total. We saw a few people near Sunset Rocks, but not very many and the weather was just great.

Sunday, we returned to Pine Grove Furnace State Park with two friends and hiked the next section of the AT north to the parking area just north of highway 94 for a total of 11 miles. The hike started with a short walk on a gravel bike path along a really pretty spring. The weather was much colder than last week. The highs only reached the low 40s and it was pretty windy, which made it feel colder.

 Rocks along one section of the trail. This is as close as we got to any views on this hike.

 Lichens on rocks.

 One of our friends standing near a coal pit. There were a number of these of varying depths along the trail.

 A pretty stream near James Frye Shelter.

 This was a really interesting tree: a Winged Elm (Ulmus alata). If you click to enlarge, you can see way the bark stands out away from the branches in wings. I have no idea what kind of tree it is. Michael figured out what kind of tree it is.

 Our first true wildflower of the season: Simplocarpus foetidus (Skunk Cabbage).

 The trail along an old railroad grade.

Right at the end of the hike, near a road, we found another wildflower: Claytonia virginica (Spring Beauty).

This wasn't a bad hike at all, but it is probably one I don't need to repeat unless it is part of a longer trip. It is a fairly unremarkable walk through the woods.