Bill and Amy are awesome!

7-3-09 day 31
start: Clarence Fanestock State Park, NY
end: Bill and Amy's House, NY
daily mileage: 10.5
total mileage: 408.4

Whisp stayed with us in our tentsite at the state park last night (hikers stay for free). The site was really unremarkable... I can't imagine paying for it, actually! It's right next to a highway, and several people's houses can be easily seen from the site! It was hard to get to sleep, actually, with the noise.

We hit some awesome trail magic today: fresh fruit and muffins! We're so overwhelmed by everyone's generosity out here on the trail!

Quick back-story about our destination tonight: when we stayed at the Outhouse, a guy named Bill (who through hiked in '99) told us about a July 4th party he was having at his house. His house just happened to be about the right distance up the trail from the Outhouse, and it is right off the trail! He made it clear that it was cool to arrive on the 3rd... so we made it a short day today and got in around 2:00.

Bill's place is great! He has us staying above the garage in a big room, and he and his wife Amy made a delicious dinner for us (turkey and a greenbean casserole that was out of this world!), and we got driven to Walmart for a few groceries and supplies. We watched 7 Pounds and ate cookies before bed. We're excited to take our first zero mile day tomorrow and enjoy the party here!

Water water everywhere...

7-2-09 day 30
start: Hemlock Springs Campsite, NY
end: Clarence Fahnestock State Park
daily mileage: 16.0
total mileage: 397.9

No picture today... it seems that the camera was damaged in the deluge (but don't worry, it will turn out OK in a few days). Lots of animals around the campsite last night - we heard coyotes yipping away from really close! We woke up lots because of the rain, but our fly was keeping us pretty dry except for little flecks of water coming in from the sides... until a flash flood-like river suddenly started pouring in from the open end! Lots of our stuff got pretty wet, but we're used to hiking in wet socks... it's been a very wet month!

The trail was soaked, and we were constantly navigating around huge pools of mud and water. The craziest part was a river crossing which had swollen to epic proportions. The rocks that were probably intended to serve as stepping stones were easily a foot and a half under water (which was flowing really fast), so we took off our boots and just forded it! It was pretty cool in retrospect! Met lots more people today: Tropic Thunder, Axman, and Intense. We've been hiking with Whisp for a few days now, too. Woo trail friends!

35 cent wings!

7-1-09 day 29
start: Fingerboard Shelter, NY
end: Hemlock Springs Campsite, NY
daily mileage: 16.3
total mileage: 381.9

Some more tough climbs today, but they were definitely still fun. We saw our first wild turkey off the trail!

The AT actually passes through a small zoo, so we spent some time in the "Bear Mountain Zoo" which rehabilitates injured animals. Many of the zoos cages were pretty smallish, and lots of the hikers going through reacted pretty negatively. All the animals were local (I guess porcupines and sea otters are around here?), and we saw a funny sight around the turkey vulture cage: he'd just been fed some carrion, and six or seven free turkey vultures from the mountains all landed around his cage to try to get some. So we have this picture of the free turkey vulture on the left, and the caged one on the right. We were comforted to realize, when we asked a zoo attendant, that they hadn't just escaped!

We were starving by the time we got to Fort Montgomery around dinner time (we had to do some grocery shopping), but lo and behold, we saw a restaurant with 35 cent wings on Wednesdays! We did some quick math, decided it was probably wednesday, and ran up. But no! It was closed! But yes! It opened in five minutes! In short, after a lot of emotional ups and downs, Travis and I each ate 25 wings, and are now feeling extremely fat and sassy. We hiked a bit farther into camp (no shelter tonight) and got poured on... but nothing can dampen our wing-induced euphoria.

Trail Magic Bust!

6-30-09 day 28
start: Wildcat Shelter, NY
end: Fingerboard Shelter, NY
daily mileage: 14.3
total mileage: 365.5

Another very rocky day today... NY has some very interesting terrain! It's been cool though. A few very misplaced seeming 50 foot tall piles of boulders out in the middle of nowhere (the trail always seems to go over these). The forests are awesome too: a few miles today of forest with no undergrowth at all, just grassy bottom. Bizarre, but pretty. We're both impressed with the variety the trail has offered us so far.

We climbed through the lemon-squeezer today: an awesome pair of rocks (pictured right) sloped at 15 degrees or so, so they're almost impossible to walk through! The people that routed the New York trail must have had something against hikers, although we both thought it was really fun. We had a giant disappointment today though... trail magic cooler, full of empty beer cans. Both of us were devastated!

Into New York for real!

6-29-09 day 27
start: Warwick Turnpike, NJ
end: Wild Cat Shelter, NY
daily mileage: 11.7
total mileage: 351.2

Today we set off from the Outhouse for the last time, and crossed from New Jersey into New York! We were driven to our starting point on Warwick Turnpike, and passed the Smith Brothers right at the outset. We've been making good friends with all kinds of people on the trail... it's been awesome.

There were tons of huge rocks today, so it was pretty slow going. The huge rocks that we're bouldering over are a lot of fun to climb though! We made a delicious stop at Bellvale Creamery (just off the trail) for some tasty homemade ice cream, and took our lunch there. When we finally got to the shelter, we were enjoying some nice conversation and blew right past it... didn't realize for about another mile that we'd missed it. There's another 2 miles on our day today... we're hoping that if we keep getting lost this often, we'll end up doing 3,000 miles instead of a wimpy 2,200! Good thing we hike fast!

Slackpacking

6-28-09 day 26
start: The Outhouse in Unionville, NY
end: Warwick Turnpike, NJ
daily mileage: 17.3
total mileage: 339.5

Today, we slackpacked for the first time. It turns out that Dick, Bill, and Butch's kindness was far greater than expected... he likes to give people a chance to stay at his house twice in a row, and so he drives people up 17 miles to Warwick Turnpike and lets them hike back to his house for a second night there! From there, he drives you back to the turnpike the next morning to hike north! So, we let him drive us up to Warwick Turnpike, hiked back to the Outhouse, and had another great night in the lap of luxury!

We didn't take our full packs (since we were heading south, and ending up back where we started). We had an interesting hangup right at the beginning, though... a great younger guy, also named Bill, was slackpacking with us. We enjoyed a bit of chow for breakfast with him just as we started, and set off... only to somehow, on a linear trail, to get totally turned around. It wasn't until we got all the way back to the turnpike that we realized... we had somehow hiked 2 miles south (as we should have been today) and literally turned around without realizing it, only to hike 2 miles back north! I guess our internal compasses couldn't stand the idea of going southbound for a day! Our little adventure added 4 miles to the day, but it was relatively flat so it was fine.

We hiked on a neat boardwalk for a few miles today, and saw lots of weekend hikers, which was a lot of fun. Beautiful weather, for a change!

The Outhouse is the coolest place ever!

6-27-09 day 25
start: Rutherford Shelter, NJ
end: The Outhouse in Unionville, NY
daily mileage: 11.4
total mileage: 322.2

Today was incredible... a relatively short hike to the coolest place on the trail. New Jersey dips into New York for just a tad on the trail (it then returns to Jersey before entering NY for real 25 miles later). We stopped in Unionville, the NY town the trail dips into, because we'd heard from a fellow hiker earlier on that Unionville's old mayor was super friendly to hikers and would put us up for the night.

We were blown away. We entered the General Store where she called Butch, an older guy who came down to pick us up. We weren't sure what to expect, even as he explained the house rules: basically, the house is yours to do with what you want, but be sure to recycle the beer cans and we'll charge you a quarter for every word over three syllables you use! This "four syllable" rule was kind of the opposite of the normal "four letter" rule... since Butch swore freely explaining these rules to us. We got to the house and met Dick, the owner. It turned out that the house was actually Dick's real house, and he told us to help himself to his beer, his shower, his laundry machine, and that he'd feed us dinner AND breakfast! The craziest part of this generosity is the scale of it... he does this full time for through hikers, and just tonight, there were another 12 people in his house along with us. It was amazing how good the food was, how great his hospitality, and generally, HOW FREE IT WAS! He was an amazing guy, and I could ramble about him for forever. He, Butch, and Bill were the three guys in charge of the operation.

After dinner, he showed us a motivational movie about how we can definitely finish our hike if we stick to it, and then let us free to watch TV or movies or whatever. We're really grateful to him!