Date: 2003-06-29
From: Black Mountain

To: Graymoor Monastery
Miles today: 13.9

A total of 13.9 miles to the Graymoor Monastery.   Whenever I sleep in the hammock I always get up a little later. I woke up this morning about 5:30 and started getting packed up. I got walking by about 6:20. I walked out down the little logging road back to the AT and saw that Commander & Chief had already packed up and left. I started heading north on the trail. I walked by quite a number of early morning day hikers and stopped to talk to a couple of them. I haven¢t talked about the trail too much in New York and New Jersey. I would say that in both states they have spent a lot of money making the Appalachian Trail a really nice place to walk. In New Jersey something that surprised me was that there was an awful lot of marsh land.   Large parts of it. Miles at a time. They have taken the time to put boards (2x8¢s) and cut off telephone poles so that you can walk through the marsh without getting your feet wet. They cut back the growth. It beats the heck out of some places in Pennsylvania and Virginia where if there¢s mud you¢re just gonna walk through the mud and if there¢s water you¢re just going to walk through the water. In New Jersey and New York, any place that¢s like that¢¦.as a matter of fact there¢s this one section that¢s a beautiful, well made, pressure treated, elevated walkway. High quality stuff. They put about 2 continuous miles through the marsh. Some of the sections of this marsh kind of reminded me of the Everglades. It was flat land. There was what looked like saw grass, although I know it wasn¢t saw grass, it was long reeds and cattails growing out of the water. Then you get into New York and New York is a fantastic place for the trails. Not just a great place to hike through as an AT hiker but great trails for day hikers. Harriman State Park in particular was a wonderful place and I see that a lot of people have taken advantage of it. A lot of hikers going through there. Also, in New Jersey there is a lot of ridge walking. What this means is that they take you up and across the spine of the mountains where the rock is exposed in long sections. As a matter of fact, I just kept thinking like I was walking across the backs of sperm whales that had gotten frozen into the ground. That¢s the kind of rocks they were. Nice, round, long runs. Then they would drop you back down into marsh land and back up again to ridges. This was New Jersey. Harriman State Park in New York¢¦.this place has widely spaced trees with really lush branches so that you¢re basically walking through very filtered sunlight. Sunlight gets through but there is a lot of shade. It¢s wide open. If you¢re used to walking the trail it actually gets a little confusing because you¢re used to basically having tunnel vision and walking through a well defined trail. I mean, you walk along and you can¢t mistake it. You¢ve got a 4 foot path almost like a tunnel. Both sides of the path is usually densely overgrown.   That¢s most of the AT. The AT through Harriman State Park is just wonderful. There are big rock formations that you walk over and through. You walk over and walk around them. There¢s one place called Lemon Squeeze where I don¢t see how most people make it through. I had a hard time getting through. My backpack got stuck that¢s how skinny it was. Anyway, back to my day. There was more hiking. About 7 miles. It was very similar to what I was just talking about. Harriman State Park type. Lots of big boulders to walk through. Some pretty good, steep uphills and downhills. They weren¢t big. Maybe 700 or 800 footers but big enough to remind you of what you¢ve done in the past in the south and what¢s coming up in the north in New England. I caught up to Commander & Chief about 8:30 in the morning. I talked to her for a few minutes and it started to drizzle a little bit. At this point we were on a road. I was headed for Bear Mountain and you had to walk a short section on the road then go back in the woods. I told her that the trail companion said that Bear Mountain Inn up top had all the goodies. A restaurant with breakfast, lunch and dinner. They had vending machines and an outdoor grill. She seemed to get very excited about that. I left her and hauled it. I walked up to the very top of Bear Mountain where there¢s a structure there and had the attendant take my picture with me standing in front of it. I attempted to find the trail from there. It was a little confusing because there were some big rock flats. There were 5 young, black kids who had just ridden up on motorcycles standing in one place. They asked me if I was just out for the day and I tried to explain to them that I was doing the Appalachian Trail. They were pretty well astounded. They couldn¢t comprehend having walked from almost Atlanta, Georgia to here. They couldn¢t comprehend the concept of sleeping outside. It¢s very funny to run into people that have no clue as to what the AT is and what the people on the AT go through. Anyway, the attendant told me that the Bear Mountain Inn has really cut back. The grills are no long there. The cafeteria is no longer there. It was pretty iffy if I was going to get breakfast. I headed on down there. Another 40 minutes worth of walking. Mainly downhill. I got down to the Bear Mountain Inn and actually it was part of a large complex park. They had food stands all over the place. None of them open of course. There was a merry-go-round enclosed in this large, round building. There were big, flat, grassy areas with picnic tables surrounding it. It was a really beautiful park. Very popular park too. It was very early in the morning and the place was filling up. There were hundreds and hundreds of people.   I decided I wasn¢t going to get anything to eat anytime soon and I didn¢t want to wait. By that time Commander & Chief caught up and I talked to her for a bit. I told her what the food situation was and she decided to stay and wait for the hot dog stand to open up. I decided to move on. The book says that Fort Montgomery has a restaurant 7/10¢s of a mile off the trail. That¢s where I¢m headed now. I ended up walking through the park and walking through the Trailside Museum which was a pretty cool place. Trailside Museum and Zoo. They had animals in there. They had a variety of trees and all kinds of stuff. All labeled. Anyway, here I am coming up to the restaurant. It¢s called the Trading Post Restaurant. I¢m standing right in front of it and I¢m going to see if I can get some food. I got inside the Trading Post Restaurant only to find out they don¢t open until 12:00 and it was 10:40. I debated sitting there and waiting for them to open. I decided to walk on down the street, which is 9 West instead. It was a very good choice because 14 mile down there was another restaurant serving an all you can eat buffet breakfast. It¢s something they can¢t make money on with a hiker. I got everything in there from biscuits to french toast to pancakes. I got the scrambled eggs and omelets¢¦the sausage links and waffles. I got watermelon and a couple cups of coffee and some coke. I basically pigged out. I refueled to hopefully make a long walk today that I don¢t have to stop for until dark. There¢s a gas station along the way which I made a pit stop at and got 3 packs of cigarettes and a 20 oz Pepsi and I¢m set to go for the rest of the day I hope. I¢m walking back towards the ridge now and there¢s the Bear Mountain Bridge and I¢m gonna be crossing it here in about 10 minutes. This ended up being a very lazy and very touristy day. I laid back. I did spend a lot of time checking out the Trailside Museum and Zoo and Bear Mountain and the park. I got into the monastery and it was a pretty nice place. They have the picnic pavilion pretty well isolated from the monastery which is understandable because those dudes just want to hang out and pray and not be bothered. There were no hot showers. They were ice cold showers which I had to squirm and squeal about. I took a shower anyway and laid my stuff out on one of the picnic tables to dry out. The other thing is that they did not start feeding hikers until July. This was still June 29th so I wasn¢t getting a meal. I took my shower, laid my stuff out and sat there for awhile by myself thinking I was going to have the place to myself. About an hour later Commander & Chief and Itchy Foot hiked in together. Then about an hour after them two section hikers showed up. One of them was named Home Run and the other one I can¢t remember. At any rate, I had already staked out my sleeping spot which was going to be on top of one of the picnic tables. I moved it to the right place and filled up all my water bottles. I got food ready to cook in case the Fathers didn¢t come down to invite us to dinner which they never did. It was basically a lazy afternoon what was left of it. This was about 4:00 or so by that time. 4:00 for me these days seems like an eternity. I¢ve gotten so used to¢¦.I don¢t know what to do with myself if I¢m not hiking or walking until dark. I don¢t know what to do with the spare time anymore. Usually I get into a place about 8:00 or 7:00. Sometimes as late as 10:00 and just do everything I can as fast as possible. I eat and set up my hammock if I have to. There¢s not really a lot of leisure time hiking the AT. At least if you¢re trying to make miles. It¢s a wake up, hot walk until dark¢¦set up, sleep and wake up the next morning and start over again. I basically hung out. There was a Reader¢s Digest. I read the Reader¢s Digest and read the hiker journal. I read all the journal entries for the last couple of weeks. Then I chatted with the people who were there. At some point we all went to bed. The four of us were sleeping on picnic tables. The mosquitoes were just horrible. There is no letting up on the mosquitoes. They are 24-7 at this point. If you stop moving they go where you are and they follow you. The carbon monoxide fume is what they¢re attracted to. They just eat you alive. If you¢re in a sleeping bag and you¢re covered up they go right for your face. If your hand is out they bite your hands. The bug spray doesn¢t really seem to be effective for very long. We are all laying on our picnic tables in the middle of the night and first Itchy Foot jumps up and starts setting up his tent. He kept trying to get away from the bugs. He¢s headed up under the pavilion. 15 minutes later Commander & Chief jumps off her table and starts setting up her tent. Then the other guy, the section hiker (actually he¢s going from Harper¢s Ferry all the way to Maine so he¢s doing half the trail), he gets up and sets up his tent as well. I just went ahead and got my bug head net and soaked myself in bug repellant. My hands, my face, my neck, my shoulders and all that. I¢m just going to try and sleep on the table which wasn¢t that comfortable after all. I ended up just moving on to the floor. It¢s a great place to stop at. I¢m sure when there¢s no mosquitoes it¢s like heaven. It wasn¢t great for me to stay at but it was convenient because water was close by and all that. The shower. Other than that it would have been nice to have been in a motel that night.