Date: 2008-05-23
From: Lookout Rock Campsite PA 

To: Mohican Outdoor Center NJ
Miles today: 12.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Day 96 ¢ Friday May 23 ¢ Mohican Outdoor Center NJ ¢ Miles Today: 12.0 Total Miles: 1292.1Of course, those Pennsylvania rocks were not informed of the state line today. They continued over into New Jersey, as I¢m sure they will for the next few days. But they weren¢t bad today. We had much, much longer stretches of nice trail today. We hiked into Delaware Water Gap and unfortunately, we misread our confusing map and hiked over the Delaware River Bridge before we realized we were in New Jersey and the post office was in Pennsylvania. Oops. So we backtracked about 15 minutes this morning to the post office. What an experience the post office was. We had 5 boxes plus an anniversary card from Mr. & Mrs. Grasshopper waiting for us. David J. sent Hershey kisses. Harry and Marian sent Tasty Kakes, M&Ms and a big bag of mini chocolate bars. Amy, Philip and Pam from work sent Rice Krispie treats, pretzels, South Beach bars which are high in protein, trail mix, wipes, chocolate shortcake cookies, Nature Valley bars, summer sausage and pictures of Amy's new baby. Jim D. sent his normal box of chocolate sticks. On top of all those goodies we got our normal food drop. The food drop was for some reason missing our lunch items, but due to all the goodies from our friends and family members, we will be doing just fine! The Nature Valley bars, the South Beach bars, the Rice Krispies treats and the summer sausage will work perfectly for lunch over the next few days.Reality then sank in. Yikes, our challenge is going to be carrying all the extra food! We just looked at it and thought there as no way all of it could fit in our backpacks and if it could fit, there was no way that we could carry the extra load! We shared some of the chocolate with the Post Office lady for kindly holding all of our packages for us. OK, we really shared some with her to lighten our load, but it sounded good, didn¢t it? Then we split the food between Brakeman's pack and what room was left in Grasshopper¢s pack. We headed out to once again cross the Delaware River with probably 10 extra pounds of food. We somewhat quickly adjusted to the extra weight, although our legs felt it at the end of the day. But we had lots of good eats, so perhaps it was worth it! Walking over the Delaware River Bridge into New Jersey, the first time, was a very emotional time for Grasshopper. Brakeman had his emotional time yesterday when he just got really happy and pleased with the progress we've been making. Today was the day for the emotions of our progress to hit Grasshopper. As she walked across the bridge, her eyes became misty, her arms wanted to reach for High-Fives and her lungs wanted to scream YaHoos. She felt in her heart that ¢Maine was ours¢¦ that we would make it the whole way!¢ But she held back from voicing anything to Brakeman, so as to not jinx the adventure and instead just blew some snot rockets that caught in the wind and unfortunately hit him. Priceless!Now we are even. A few years ago, in Glacier National Park, Brakeman made the mistake of peeing in a wind. Grasshopper was unfortunately standing down wind. Also priceless!Just on the other side of the bridge in New Jersey is a park, Worthington State Forest. As we walked through the parking lot looking for our next white blaze, a gentleman hopped out of his car - a young guy in his 20s - and asked if he could hike with us for a while. An odd request, but we said ¢Sure.¢ So he hiked the next 5 miles with us. He is interested in doing the AT someday but basically knows nothing about it. Since we love talking about our AT hike, it was great to have him along.   He was also a good mental diversion for us. Despite our heavy packs, we walked with him for 5 miles and told him basically everything we knew about gear selection, long distance hiking, the AT, the tradition of trail names, food, you name it, we talked about it. He was a great hiking companion.   We went our separate ways at Sunfish Pond.We had a nice lunch break at Sunfish Pond, the first glacier lake we have crossed on our northbound AT journey. Brakeman went to the pond¢s edge to take a picture and we nearly had to fish him out when he slipped at the water¢s edge. Luckily he did not fall in! We were able to get cell phone reception and placed a few calls to thank our Trail Angels for such wonderful boxes of food!All in all, a super day with another major milestone, in that it did not rain. We had a beautiful blue sky with white puffy clouds all day long with a gentle breeze. It was just absolutely gorgeous. We're at the Mohican Outdoor Center where we can camp for free, but pay for fuel with gold. The young guy behind the counter with a little wink of the eye said he wouldn¢t watch how much fuel we poured into our bottle. We poured about 16oz and paid $2, about 4oz worth. We decided to use the opportunity at our private campsite to get haircuts. Yes, we are carrying a small pair of lightweight hair cutting scissors!   We sat on the end of our little tent pad with our rain jacket on and our handkerchief tucked around our neck and clipped away as fast as we could as the gnats were out in force. So tonight we are sporting nice buzzed haircuts that perhaps will last us nearly to Maine. Who knows, may need just one more haircut for this trip. We found some sort of netting (perhaps a tent attic?) on the trail today and Brakeman is using it as a head net in an attempt to survive the bugs. Whatever odor his body puts off, the bugs always seem to love it! He's a great person to stand beside if you don't want any bugs as they all go to him. He's like a bug light. Hey, maybe we ought to change his trail name to Bug Light. Too funny.It's about 7:00 and 70 degrees and we just got done hanging the humongous food bag. I think this is the largest amount of food we've carried, volume-wise, on this entire trip. Hanging the bag in a tree took quite a bit of work. We actually had to move the picnic table to under the limb so Grasshopper could stand on the picnic table and boost up the bag while Brakeman tugged on the rope. Of course, we moved the picnic table away from our food bag once it was hung. If a bear is going to get to it, it¢s going to have to work for it! Our chore for the next couple days is to eat real well, which should be easy. We have Plan A and Plan B for tomorrow. We¢re going to try for about 21 miles, but if it's just too rocky and not doable, we'll stop at 14 miles. If we do just 14 miles, then the following day could be a 20-21 mile day. These higher mileage days should enable us to eat lots of our extra goodies.The weather forecast for the next several days is supposed to be beautiful, each day getting a bit hotter. I'm sure our water consumption will increase drastically. We'll have to keep an eye on that. I think that's it from pond side - whatever pond this is at Mohican Outdoor Center. We¢re in New Jersey ¢ Woo Hoo! Goodnight and catch you tomorrow.