No doubt, Sunday was a perfect day for a summer hike.

A Reading couple certainly thought so when they started out from a trailhead in Penn Township early in the afternoon.

Leaving their car on Dead End Road, they carried with them a trail map downloaded from the Internet which promised a three-hour loop hike on State Game Lands 156 around the old Cornwall fire tower.

The map, however, was apparently old and didn't show trails, fire lanes and logging roads that now lace through the woods between the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Route 322.

The couple got turned around. Some might call it lost.

They weren't concerned, but they were not certain they could find their way out before dark.

Already in the woods for four hours and with a couple hours of daylight left, they did what Brickerville Fire Chief Sid Adams said was the right thing: They dialed 911.

About a dozen Brickerville Fire Company volunteers and Penn Township police converged on the woods.

First, they used coordinates from the couple's cell phone to get an approximate location of where they were. They stayed in contact by cell phone and told the couple to stay put.

Then they drove four-wheel-drive vehicles on trails in the woods, occasionally blasting an air horn.

"Can you hear me now? "Can you hear me now?" the rescuers asked. Or words to that effect.

Eventually, the lost hikers did hear and rescuers were able to drive almost to them. The hikers were about 5 miles away from their car.

The married couple, who seemed to be in their 50s, was calm, grateful and apologetic for rousing the volunteers away from families on a fine evening.

Adams lauded the couple for remaining grounded and making a wise choice.

"He did the right thing, absolutely," Adams said, back at the fire station. "If he'd waited until dark, we'd have had more issues. Where he was was thick. You could have floundered around there for quite a while."

• The hikers weren't the only ones to get into trouble on an outdoors outing Sunday.

A boat became stuck on a sandbar off Shad Island, in the Susquehanna River near Washington Boro.

Fire companies from Washington Boro, Highville and Lake Clarke Rescue in Long Level responded to the water rescue call and picked up the boaters.

E-mail: acrable@lnpnews.com