New Jersey to New York — May 19–28, 2022
The AT in New Jersey and New York is still mostly rocks. Scott pointed out a couple months ago, we are hiking in the mountains, and mountains are made of rocks. I still hoped and waited for the mythical soft path carpeted with sun dried pine needles that give off a scent when pressed beneath hiking boots. That happens once every so often, but all too rarely.
A hiker who completed the AT, Continental Divide Trail, and Pacific Crest Trail told us the AT is rougher than the others because most of it is rocky or clotted with tree roots. Knowing that, it’s time to get out of the “mental” phase of the hike and into the “spiritual” phase to experience the journey in the moment and not try to imagine something better than what is before us. I’m still working on that.
Day 94. Mile 1296.9, 13.79 miles/day.
Thursday, May 19. 19.5 miles. 2,562 feet up, 1,581 feet down.
We heated water with our Jetboil gas canister and ate our granola on the balcony of the Deer Field Inn, then Scott washed our clothes before the post office opened at 8:30am. He retrieved our big new tent at the appointed time and stopped for donuts along the way back to the inn. He needed energy to carry the extra couple ounces our triplex weighed compared to the duplex we were giving up. A trail buddy named Five More Minutes paid us $100 for the duplex we took on our cross-country bicycle trip and used during the first 1,300 miles of our AT trek.
We were on the shoulder of an Interstate 80 frontage road at 9:30am, crossing a long bridge over the Delaware River and walking into New Jersey. Our hopes were as high as our spirits, thinking about leaving the rocks behind. The trail turned off the highway and into the woods, broad and smooth. Soon the sound of Dunfield Creek splashing down a slope parallel to the trail replaced the roar of trucks on Interstate 80.
During the first few miles, we met small groups of Latina and Black teenage girls coming down the mountain, looking exhausted and resigned, 90 in all. They had backpacks of all shapes and sizes, even old fashioned frame packs. Some were dragging black plastic garbage bags, probably wet clothes from the rain the night before. Each group we passed asked us how many more miles to Delaware Water Gap, the end of their hike, and how long it would take them to get there. I checked our app each time and tried to give them realistic estimates, based on their pace. They weren’t walking very fast.
These kids had a hard trek, they had to be carrying at least 25 pounds each. I wondered what kind of advice the teachers gave them that maybe they ignored. Or maybe they didn’t get good advice. One of the adult chaperones told us the girls were freshmen at a Catholic high school. The five-day, 55-mile hike was a requirement to pass to sophomore year.
Everyone on the AT that day remembered those poor, tired girls. We saw no candy wrappers or litter, they left no trace. Maybe some of them will come away with a sense of stewardship for green spaces in densely populated states.
The trail continued along Catfish Pond which was edged in rocks and boulders of various sizes. Fun! We didn’t expect such an inhospitable surface in New Jersey. Wasn’t that Painsylvania’s claim to fame? A couple groups of Road Scholars, a few years older than us, were out having fun and wished us well. That always helps boost the spirit.
After a while, the trail became less gnarly and more hikeable. At 3:00pm we stopped in the Appalachian Mountain Club for sandwiches, chips, sweet tea, coffee, and ice cream sandwiches. Thirty-five bucks was pretty pricey, even with a 10% member discount. I took an ultra-light Gossamer Gear hiking pole from the collection of free stuff other hikers had left. I left the broken one there for recycling.
The sun was going down when we looked for a flattish place to pitch our tent. Because we had stopped for sandwiches, we missed our 20-mile goal and simply ran out of daylight to hike.
We made it almost twenty miles, less than we had hoped, but not bad. The trail was going through an area with beaver ponds and bogs, meaning swarms of stinging insects. We pitched the ice blue tent at 8:15pm on an old road bed that was going to grass. Both sleeping pads fit with six inches of space on either side. What capacious luxury. I heated water for hot Gatorade almost in the dark. We ate the last of our bagels with peanut butter and called it a day.
Friday, May 20. 23.4 miles. 3,419 feet up, 3,289 down.
We had packed the tent and our gear and were on the trail at 6:00am since we had many miles to cover. In fact, 23.4 was the most miles we hiked on the AT. At one point earlier in the hike, we thought maybe we’d accomplish a marathon walk but never did.
We had a reservation at Mosey’s Place, a hostel in Port Jervis, New York. We hiked up and down rocky ridges, with no break from the rocks. In the morning the temperature was about 60 degrees with 90% humidity. The mercury rose as the hours advanced, but a haze developed about noon and kept the temperature from rising too high. That haze gradually thickened into cloud, and about 5:00pm a gentle rain started to fall. We hiked on and were soaked to the skin when Mosey picked us up at 6:55pm where the trail crossed the road into town. Yes, it took us 13 hours.
Mosey thru-hiked the AT some years ago after retiring from the postal service. She requested a walking route so she could walk all day rather than drive. That prepared her for the patience she needed to hike all day and everyday for thru-hiking the AT. Her fellow hikers called her Mosey because of her relaxed attitude to the hike.
She supplements her pension with income from hosting hikers in her home. One bedroom has four double-decker bunkbeds. We opted for the futon in the living room, in case any of our fellow hikers snored. Scott said it was the weirdest place he stayed because of the lizards Mosey’s daughter-in-law kept. The terrarium was heated with lights that changed colors at regular intervals. He can’t hear well but is very alert to motion and light which meant he didn’t sleep soundly on the futon.
Saturday, May 21. 8.8 miles. 873 feet up, 1,785 feet down.
We had a relaxed start today. I worked on the blog until 11:00am. Mosey took us into the Shoprite in Port Jervis to buy food and then to the trail at Highpoint State Park in New Jersey where she had picked us up the night before. We repackaged our supplies into Ziploc bags sitting at a picnic table and resumed hiking at 1:00pm when it was 95 degrees with 90% humidity.
Hiking up the ridge to Highpoint in the extreme heat was a unique challenge, one to add to high winds, high mileage, and steep climbs. Once up, though, it was a relatively flat walk to the Sola Hostel in Unionville, New York.
Presbyterian Pastor Doug waved us off the street and invited us to join a neighborhood barbecue that was underway. We had hotdogs, bratwurst, and chips, then showered and did laundry. A flip-flop hiker named Jedi was there. He had sold his vintage Star Wars toys in original packaging for $10,000 to raise money for his hike. He’s about my age but taking it easier, hiking 10–15 miles a day. My desire to get home is pushing us harder than most hikers our age. They may be enjoying the walk more and not exhausting themselves everyday. No pain, no gain!
Sunday, May 22. 16.8 miles. 3,238 feet up, 2,631 feet down.
During the week, Pastor Doug sometimes asks hikers to do light chores around the property but exempts us on Sundays. We would have helped out but were just as happy to be underway at 7am, trying to beat the heat. The trail was everything — smooth duff, pasture, bog, boulders, and rocks, but never exhausting. The Pochuk Boardwalk over wetlands was a special treat.
The Suttons, the couple who hiked the AT last year with their pre-school son, said the AT in New Jersey had “delis everyday.” Now that we were in the state, I wanted delis. We settled for a hot dog stand and ice cream at the Heaven Hill Farm and Garden Center near Vernon, New Jersey. The market was off the trail a couple tenths of a mile, so the excursion cost us an hour.
We got to the Wawayanda Shelter by 5:30pm. That was okay for a day when the mercury hit 85 with high humidity. Two hikers were already there, a woman doing a section hike with her dog and another section hiker with a British accent from Nashville. We didn’t plan on sleeping in the shelter because we had plenty of space in our new tent.
Monday, May 23. 18.9 miles. 2,959 feet up, 3,369 feet down.
Considering the hard terrain today with boulder scrambles and a steeply graded ascent and descent, nineteen miles was pretty good. Crossing the border into New York mid-morning gave us a boost, further proof we are making progress.
A pattern of following the food is interfering with our 20-mile goals. The detour to get takeout pizza delivered to the Bellvale Farm Creamery cost us time today. That, and the ice cream for dessert. We gave some New York bendy style pizza to the hiker from Nashville we saw at the shelter yesterday evening. It was not a purely selfless gesture, we didn’t want to carry the weight.
The afternoon was more rocky trail and boulder scrambles. Late in the day, wiped out by hard hiking, I stumbled and fell forward just before Buchanan Mountain. No broken bones, just an ugly bruise on my left elbow. I guess the osteoporosis isn’t yet too dire.
I felt shaky and apprehensive about the climb, but Scott said the shakes would pass once I started walking. He’s a great coach because he’s so intuitive about anything requiring muscles. One comment about Buchanan in the app read, “Wouldn’t suggest resupplying anytime before this climb. Any extra weight in your pack is gonna make it suck harder. A fun scramble but bring a friend for support.” I was glad my best buddy was there. Why did I get so psyched out? It was only 159 feet up in a tenth of mile. Not even close to the climb out of Palmerton, PA, still the standard by which I measure all subsequent rocky climbs.
We made the equally steep descent to where the trail crosses East Mombasha Road. I called a taxi and asked him to meet us at the trail intersection. He said I probably mixed up the East and West Mombasha Roads, and it wouldn’t be his fault if I screwed up. He showed up, we got in, and went to the Tuxedo Motel where we had reserved a roomm no screwup. Hikers like this place because it’s only sixty bucks including tax, and the owner offers right off the bat to do laundry.
I unlocked the door, saw the 60s decor, probably unchanged in 60 years, and immediately renamed it the Don Draper Bender Motel. It looked just like the places the main character in Mad Men would go to disappear for his binges. Someone who doesn’t do tile work used clear silicon goop to repair cracks in the tile in the shower. Black mold was growing under the goop. I took my glasses off which made it easy to ignore, kept my Crocs on, and washed up. Our takeout dinner arrived about 8:30pm. Guess who had the cheeseburger and fries and who had the Caesar salad with grilled chicken?
Tuesday, May 24. 13.1 miles. 3,130 feet up, 2,838 feet down.
Today I hit the wall, stopping far short of our 20-mile target. My body shut down after too many long days and not enough rest. The late supper the night before did me no good, it was hard to sleep with a full belly. Or maybe the numerous scrambles and ledges wore me out.
We got started a little late, 8:45am, because our taxi from the Tuxedo Motel was late. He wasn’t familiar with the two-lane back roads in the woods. Scott was following the road on his phone app and had to tell him where to drop us. We hiked to where the AT intersects Route 17 just outside Harriman State Park, where the first section of the AT opened in 1923. A 70-something Trail Angel was parked there with his back hatch open. He offered us either banana bread or brownies, not both. He wanted to share with as many hikers as possible.
He gave us a history lesson about the Harrimans. We knew Averill Harriman, an ambassador to the Soviet Union and the the UK in the 1940s, and his widow Pamela, who died in Paris in 1997 while serving as ambassador to France. More importantly for New York, Averill Harriman was also a former governor. Our benefactor knew all these details and shared more about someone in his family or circle of friends who predicted FDR would not live out his fourth term.
Fortified with that delicious homemade banana bread, we hiked on in the park until we got to Arden Mountain. Someone left this comment in the app about it: “There are no switchbacks here because native New Yorkers are actually able to walk straight up vertical walls.” Someone else without a sense of humor posted, “Someone should tell these New York jerkoffs about switchbacks.” Wow.
We picked our way down The Agony Grind, a descent of 482 feet in three tenths of a mile. The name is a little melodramatic, but you get the point. Last up was the Lemon Squeezer. The squeezer wasn’t hard, it was the cliff face just beyond I avoided. I took the blue blaze trail around it, because the only way up required courage, height, and a long reach. With his longer arms and strong body. Scott did just fine. He was so fast, I didn’t have time to get the camera ready!
We got to our tent site at the William Brien Shelter at 7:15pm. The Civilian Conservation Corps built it in the 1930s in a hollow among the boulders. The tent sites were carved out of soft duff, a perfect place to spend the night and recuperate after the day’s exertion.
Wednesday, May 25. 10 miles. 2,949 feet up, 2,907 feet down.
Today was a proverbial walk in the park with lovely weather and scenic vistas. We were on the trail early as usual and before 8am saw the hazy Manhattan skyline from the top of Black Mountain.
We descended and in less than a mile came to a detour arranged by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy because of a fatal accident where the AT crosses the Palisades Parkway. In November 2021 a car struck and killed a 66-year-old day hiker crossing the parkway at 11:40am on a Sunday morning, presumably when weekend traffic was heavy. We thought about the extra miles the detour added and the relative risk. One hiker killed in the many decades the AT had crossed this busy road? We would be crossing late morning when most commuters were already at work and before they started home. We stayed on the usual route and had no problems. A grassy median separates the north and southbound lanes so you don’t have to run across four lanes of zoom zoom.
The trail up Bear Mountain in the state park of the same name went over the old paved road before a new parkway was built and then up stone steps to the top. A thousand stone steps led down the other side. I’ll take stone steps over rocks and boulders any day. On top was a monument to George Walbridge Perkins, a former chairman of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission. Then-New York governor Teddy Roosevelt appointed Perkins to the chairmanship, and under his leadership the commission established Bear Mountain Park and Harriman State Park.
Our destination was the Bear Mountain Bridge Motel in the town of Fort Montgomery. We got to the Bear Mountain State Park about 1pm ready for a hot lunch but all the concessions were closed and would not open until Memorial Day. We called the motel owner who gives hikers rides as part of their stay. On the way we stopped at an Italian deli and got some floppy pizza slices to take away. We had our gelato dessert right there, because it would have melted during the drive.
The motel was decent enough, but I had a half hour of back and forth with the owner getting the correct wifi network and associated password. After consulting with his wife and grandson, the owner got me the info. He seemed annoyed that I pestered him for this, and that annoyed me. I had a free afternoon and fully intended getting caught up on the blog. One cool thing. Poppins had stayed there about ten days before us and signed the guest book.
Thursday, May 26. 20.4 miles. 4,482 feet up, 3,361 feet down.
We had a wonderful $10 breakfast of pancakes, bacon, omelet, hashbrowns, and toast at a cafe a short walk from the motel. Scott liked it because he could fill his own cup from either of the two Bunn coffee makers.
The motel owner gave us a ride back to the Bear Mountain Bridge, which was a huge benefit because the area is snarled with criss crossing highways and impossible to walk. On the short drive, he went on a rant about a hiker who clogged the toilet by using too much toilet paper. He said she wrapped the toilet paper round and round her hand because she didn’t want to get her hand dirty. How he knows that detail is beyond us, and we didn’t ask. We crossed the Hudson River on the bridge before starting the climb back up into the Hudson Highlands.
We got back in the 20-mile groove, pushing hard to beat rain in the forecast. We had a finite number of miles left in New York, which meant we would soon enough be hiking in deli-free zones. Today we stopped at the deli located right on the trail. In our minds, “deli” didn’t mean Shell gas station, but what the heck? It had a hot sandwich counter, fountain drinks, and hiker foods. Calling it the Appalachian Deli makes sense considering the thousands of hungry hikers who cross the parking lot on their way north or south.
A light rain was soaking through our clothes and shoes by the time we got to Canopus Lake in the early evening. We saw the picnic tables and made a beeline for one. A table makes camping so much easier. We pitched our tent there, even though we were supposed to hike another three-tenths of a mile to the designated shelter and tenting site. With the cloud cover, dusk arrived early so we hurried to get the tent up and dinner ready before it rained harder.
Friday, May 27. 17.5 miles. 3,123 feet up, 3,406 feet down.
In the morning we checked out the park facilities which were still closed except for the bathrooms. We washed up and filled our water bottles with nice clear water before heading out into the day.
Except for a little anxiety about more rain coming, we made good time on the trail. Wildflowers were popping out everywhere, cheering us as we hiked through fragrant forest. We took a 90-minute break at lunch time to check out Corrado’s pizzeria for calzone and gelato. That detour of a half mile off trail each way meant we were on the trail for an hour in the rain at the end of the day. We were completely soaked when we met our shuttle driver Chris at the trail crossing with Route 55. She drove us 30 miles to New Milford, Connecticut, the closest town with an affordable hotel, the Rocky River Inn.
She asked for $20 which was way too low, so we gave her $30. Other drivers have taken us less distance for a lot more money. She’s an avid hiker herself and enjoys helping others.
On May 28 we took a zero because it would rain all day. We walked around town running errands, ducking into stores to get out of the rain, and doing laundry. I washed our smelly sleeping bags at a laundromat with front load washers. We got to bed early, Chris was coming at 6:30am the next day to take us back to the trail.
