Date: 2009-07-06
From: Mashipacong Shelter, NJ

To: Pochuck Shelter, NJ 
Miles today: 18.6

Cell goodOG notesWe woke up about 5:30 am and immediately started packing. We left the camp at 6:30 and started hiking. It is nice to hike in the early morning because it's cooler then. We reached the High Point Park Office at 8:40 but it didn't open until 9:00 am. We waited to use the bathrooms and I also finished last night's journal entry. We then sent all of the entries from the pay phone.We hiked on for another mile until we reached an observation deck. This deck is about 40 feet up and you sit above the trees for a great view of the valley below. Our handbook says you can see NYC from there, but it was hazy in the distance so we didn't see it.We then hiked on until we reached the High Point Shelter. The shelter we stayed at last night did not have a water source. We decided the place that had the best water source was High Point shelter. The water at the park office had a sulfer taste so we opted to get good spring water when we got to the shelter. We took another break and ate lunch here. I don't know how we hiked 18.6 miles today with all of these breaks, but we did it.We just finished dinner and we are now in our tent. We don't seem to have the mosquito problem we had the last two shelters we stayed at. This shelter is on a hillside and it has a little breeze to keep the little buggers away. I had my fear of this being a bad place for mosquitos because we are sitting above a wetland that is set aside as a national wildlife preserve. Thank goodness I was wrong. C6 notesWe feel good about doing so many miles today, but I'm drained from all the miles in the hot sun. It's good to be in the tent and relaxing now (7pm).   Another thing that made today's hike draining was all the mud. We are finally out of the rocks, which is lovely! But with less rocks comes muddy areas...lots of mud! All the rain this year yields good water sources, but it also makes a LOT of mud, and millions of mosquitos. Ugh!It's so nice to be back in "normal" terrain again. After the stress of all the rocks, today was a delight with more dirt paths. I found it interesting to feel as if today was a "normal" day, with a nice lunch stop at the High Point shelter and good hiking. Rocky PA was so NOT normal. I hadn't realized how stressful it was to hike on so many rocks until we got back to dirt paths today and it felt like such a relief.Someone asked me if I fell down the mountain when I fell and hit my head last week. Actually, we were on level ground, but there were so many small (average 6" in diameter) rocks, that there were very few places to put your foot without being on rocks. The rocks stick up every which way; very few are flat. We both tripped ofen that day. I fell when I didn't catch myself from a trip. Our hiking poles help a lot to prevent falls, and give us more stability, but when there are so many small rocks sticking up at all angles, it's hard to place the poles in places where they are helpful.I'm so glad to be done with the PA rocks!!!The shelter we're at tonight has a strange water source. A half mile down the hill there's an abandoned house that's owned by the State of New Jersey. The water source for this shelter is a water spigot coming out of the back wall of the house. I'm amazed that the house isn't vandalized. The house is up on a hill a ways back from the road, but it's clearly abandoned.   The grass isn't mowed and the driveway has grass growing in huge clumps all over. The house is empty, but all the windows are intact and there is no grafitti. Interesting. We got our water and then came up to the shelter.We've heard there are a lot of bears in NJ. So far we haven't seen more than the tail end of a bear running away from us (or was that in PA? I don't recall for sure). Each shelter in NJ does have a Bear Box for food. It's nice to not have to hang a bear bag at night. The boxes are quite secure. The bear box at this shelter tonight looks like a metal foot locker. The new bear boxes at other shelters are larger and nicer.Old Goat & Check Six