Date: 2016-06-19
From: Graymoor Spiritual Center

To: Countryside Motel, Cold Spring, NY
Miles today: 11.8
Weather: scattered clouds

Day 5 - A very different hiking day today... the only people we saw today were other hikers in the woods...no picnickers, no crying babies in strollers and no bears in hammocks!!We hit the trail at 6:30am...we were first out of Camp. We immediately climbed to a ridge and followed it for several miles. As is our usual pattern, we stopped after 1.5 hours for breakfast. We find that we are not usually hungry when we first wake up, but we are after an hour or so we are ready to eat...this also gets us out of camp earlier. We try to stop for breakfast in a place with a view, if possible. We have had breakfast at some wonderful 'venues'!!After breakfast we descended to what would be the first of multiple road crossings for the day. Of course the problem with road (and river) crossings is that it means we have to climb up afterwards!! For this day, the descents and subsequent climbs were fairly steep.Three days ago it rained so the humidity was 100% and the temperatures were in the 70's. Every day after that has been mostly clear but temperatures have been rising. Today it was 90 degrees with about 60% humidity. Either way, rain or shine, we sweat whenever we start exerting ourselves!!We continued the pattern of waking the forest on a ridge then dropping to a road only to climb back to the ridge. Most of the descents and climbs were fairly steep. At the second to last road we found trail magic for the second time on this hike. "Trail Magic" is a service or a gift to a hiker by a stranger¢¦ this can take the form of a ride from or to the trail, water caches on dry stretches or snack left beside the trail...we have even seen a guy in Tennessee set up a BBQ at a road crossing and serve burgers to passing hikers!! The people who do this are called "Trail Angels". They do this to support the hiker community, usually at no cost to the hikers. For this trip, trail angels left water caches at several road crossings on Day 2 when there was very little natural water and today with an ice chest with cold beer. ET doesn't usually drink beer and Spider decided not to risk being further dehydrated by drinking alcohol...but it sure looked good!! Instead we took some of the ice to cool down our bottles of water...Thanks Trail Angels!!After crossing our last road we had a climb that included a short hand over hand portion. After climbing 300 feet, we dropped down to, what appeared to be, an old narrow gauge railroad bed. It was flat and smooth so we were able to increase our pace. We covered the last mile of our hike in the same time it took to cover the previous 0.5 milesWe arrived at Highway 301 at 5:15pm. Spider had been trying for the last couple of days to connect with a trail angel to transport us to a nearby motel, but had been unable to connect with her. So we went to Plan B...call a taxi!! The taxi arrived at 5:45pm and whisked us the Countryside Motel. We checked in and found that our resupply box of food for next week was waiting for us...Wahoo!! After checking in our first order of business was¢¦ you guessed it, a shower?!! After making ourselves less odiferous, we put on our only clean set of clothes and walked 0.3 miles down the road to an Italian restaurant. Our attire didn't exactly fit in, but they seated us then stood back and watched us down a bunch of food!!When we checked in at the motel, we found out that the deli across the road had closed. Since the Italian restaurant is closed on Mondays, we ordered a second set of dinners to-go so we would have something for tomorrow night. On the way back to the motel, we stopped at a nearby liquor store and bought a bottle of Chianti...dinner is set for tomorrow!!Once back in our room the effects of a long day, a full stomach and a bottle of wine over dinner took effect. ET made it through 2 paragraphs of her book before falling asleep and Spider fought sleep long enough to see the Warriors lose in the NBA Finals...Boo Hoo!!Major milestone: we passed 50 miles on this year's hike...only about 450 miles to go!!