Bunny tried to overdose me last night. She couldn’t sleep so she made me take two Benadryl. I’ve been in a drug haze all day. I just wanted to lay down in the trail and take al nap. If Bunny would have had a whip, I have no doubt she would have used it on me to get me going.
She started out with an alarm at 6:40. Of course, we snoozed a couple of times and got going by 8:30. The trail was rather pleasant for the first four miles which was actually the last 4 miles of New Jersey. Jersey ended on a high note for us with pleasant weather and decent terrain.
We ran into Bee Keeper as soon as we got to the first road crossing. He had turned around and came back to get sprayed down because of all the up mosquitoes. That has been the only complaint about yesterday and today, and it has been a daily complaint for NJ. It’s ironic that NJ is so swampy yet water is almost impossible to find along the trail.
It was only 4 miles to the New York State line crossing.. We were still walking with Bee Keeper when we crossed into New York. We are now done with 8 states and the next 3 states are all under a hundred miles each. We should make it to Vermont by early August.
We had been warned that NY was rugged. It was a lot of rock scrambles which would have been fun if it wasn’t so hot and impossible to cross in the rain. We could see the New York City skyline through a gap in the next ridge.
Bunny’s original motivation was a hot dog and a creamery at the first road crossing in NY. Once again, we were food motivated. Hot dogs and ice cream for lunch two days in a row. We had an additional incentive when we both ran out of water with 2 miles to go.
We got bad news at road—the hot dog stand is closed on Mondays. This blow was eased by the trail magic which included a new pair of Darn Tuff socks. Tentman gets a case from them every year to hand out to hikers. The sodas and water were very welcome after being without water the last couple of miles.
We still made the side trip to the creamery. Bunny had her heart set on ice cream and who am I to say no. Just as we got within sight of the place, a bus full of Jehovah Witnesses pulls in. My heart sunk but when two smelly hikers walked into the shop, the sea of witnesses parted for us. We were able to get our banana splits and a table and were never crowded by the people. Bee Keeper and Hummingbird joined us after the rush.
We grabbed about 5 liters of water before committing to another 2.5 miles to the first shelter in the state. Tentman had warned us we had two more rock piles to cross before the shelter. Since it was after 5, things were cooling off a bit and we felt better walking.
We were the first to arrive at the shelter so we allowed our packs to explode. Before we could clean up the explosion, 3 more section hikers from Ohio showed up. Lee, his son Zeric, and his friend, Mike. Lee is a retired school teacher who has travelled extensively. When we told him of our travels of the last couple of years, this led to a political conversation and our hopes for the future of our country. We were both pretty depressed with the current status.
I had already scouted the area around the shelter and found the water source—a near stagnant pool with mosquitoes swarming around it with a frog sitting in the middle that stirred up crap from the bottom if you dipped too close to him/her (once again, I respected its privacy and didn’t check for its sexuality). We all started referring to the water we filtered as “frog water.” It tasted pretty good considering, but if Miss Piggy doesn’t mind a little frog jizz, we should be able to handle a bit as well.
We were hoping for another cool night to knock down the mosquito population a bit. It just never cooled off. Bunny and I considered setting up our tent, but she had already drugged me with Benadryl and I just didn’t have the energy. Even with my ear plugs in and covered up with my down quilt, the little bitches were buzzing my head. My only choices were sweat to death and be annoyed by buzzing, or cool off to just uncomfortably warm and get eaten alive. Throw in two Ohioans who snored and this strengthened my resolve to set up the tent from here on out.
EFG