Date: 2003-06-26
From: Culvers Gap

To: Unionville, NJ
Miles today: 23.1

23.1 miles from Culvers Gap to Lott Road in Unionville, New Jersey. I woke up at 5:42 this morning in much better spirits than I went to bed with last night. I got my backpack packed up and went across the street to the deli and got a coffee and a sausage, egg and cheese sandwich then I came back and sat out front eating and having coffee and smoking a cigar. New Jersey seems to love it¢s deli¢s and bakeries. Just in the three miles from where the trail head is to where the hotel is here at Codman were four deli/bakeries and this is a country road. People in New Jersey ( at least in the area I¢ve walked in so far ) seem to suffer from a split personality. At first meeting they seem to be pretty hard edged like the reputations that their New York neighbors have but then you talk to them for a couple of minutes and they are ready to buy you drinks and take you home. I turned in my key and got on the road and started walking and hitchhiking by 6:30. I walked about a mile or so¢¦about 20 minutes..when a guy named Kenny picked me up. Kenny is a landscaper who also plays in a hard rock band at night called Crushpile. Must be a local band I guess. He gave me one of their stickers which I¢ll keep. Really nice guy. He took me out to the trail head and by a quarter to 7 I was walking again. The beginning walk was nice and flat and very smooth going into a slight climb through a lot of rocks then it flattened out again. I must be feeling really good because I hardly even noticed the climb. Yesterday afternoon I probably would have turned around half way through it and gone back and gotten a ride to the nearest Greyhound station. My feet feel good this morning. I think the little time off with my shoes off and the 12 dozen ibuprofen I popped has helped a lot. I also experimented with taking the insoles that I¢ve been carrying and trying them out in a different way. It seems to be working, in terms of, helping to cushion the area with the blisters. I¢ve had very little problems this morning. Also, I know I¢m going to jinx myself by saying this, the rocks seem to be getting better. They are wider and spaced apart where you can actually pick your way between them instead of having to walk across the top of them or walk in between them and get your feet jammed. It¢s already hot but it doesn¢t seem to be bothering me yet. I¢ve been walking through literally a cloud of mosquitoes and gnats.   They¢re leaving me alone up to this point. I haven¢t really been sweating enough to wash off the DEET that I sprayed all over myself morning. I¢m not having a problem with the bugs yet other than trying not to swallow them. There¢s so many of them that I¢m trying to make sure to breathe in through my mouth and breathe out through my nose because at least I can spit the bugs out when I suck them in my mouth. It really sucks to suck them in up through your nose. You can¢t get them out. Anyway, that¢s the way the story goes at 8:15 this morning. Feeling good so far. Who knows? Maybe I¢ll make up the mileage I lost yesterday. Although I shouldn¢t look at it as losing it. Maybe I will get enough miles in to get my mail drop on Saturday so I don¢t have to wait around for 2 days. Later that afternoon¢¦. I did better today than I expected I was going to. I ended up doing 23.1 miles from Culvers Gap to Lott Road in Unionville, New Jersey. Rocks were once again a major factor today. Although I hear that I¢ve probably gone through the last of it. There were some sections that seemed to be easing off and then there were other sections that had some really nasty rocks and some uphills that didn¢t make much sense. I knew they were taking you uphill through rocks and there was a road right there next to you. The heat and the mosquitoes were just oppressive. I looked down at my thermometer and it said 95 degrees at one point and that is what the radio also recorded. I was listening to the radio when I could get reception. For some reason, I¢m thinking because I¢m so close to New York now, the radio reception sucks. I keep getting jumped back and forth between stations. There must be too many stations in this area. Really, by any rights and the standards of the Appalachian Trail set before this, New Jersey is not bad. It¢s not big changes in elevation. It¢s not really hard rocks. It¢s not really hard anything except for the fact that you just went through Pennsylvania. At any rate, I think I¢m just beat up.I¢m beat up from Pennsylvania and from the rocks and then switching over to rocks and heat and the mosquitoes. Today there was extra stuff thrown at you. Not only was it really hot and rocky but the mosquitoes were out in gangs. You couldn¢t stop anywhere, not even for a second.   They seem to go right for the places where I can¢t see them. Right on the back of my elbow or just under the elbow. I don¢t see them until they¢ve landed there and sucked my blood for a couple of minutes. I tried stopping several times. I probably stopped 5 times today and took out my towel, wiped myself dry and put some more DEET on. In the high heat of the day the DEET has a reaction with your skin where it feels like you have just put an iron on it. Your skin gets really hot wherever it touches it. That will keep them off until you start sweating badly again. Then they go for you in every spot that you don¢t see. The back of your knees. The back of your elbows. The back of your neck. I had a dim hope this morning that I would manage to get 30 plus miles in. It¢s really, really pushing it. I managed to get out to Lott Road at 4:50 in the afternoon. I¢m very hungry because I pushed all day. I had a breakfast sandwich and was eating candy bars the whole time. Not substantial by my terms. I ate candy bars all day and didn¢t stop for lunch. By the time I hit Lott Road at a quarter to 5 I was pretty well assured, especially after I ran into Ridgerunner an hour and a half before, that if I went to the Backpack Inn not only did they have cheeseburgers there but they had a hostel which was very cramped where I was supposed to spend the night. I determined that 23.1 miles in this kind of weather was all I was going to do today. That was fine because I¢m not going to make my mail drop by 12 o¢clock on Saturday. I¢ll just take it easy for a little while. The last hour or two when you know you¢re about to get into town seems to be the worst. They seem to take forever. This was no exception.   I kept looking for the road and the Appalachian Trail data book showed only one road and there were actually about 5 roads you had to cross and walk through. There were little signs telling you what road it was. Looking at my watch I knew that I was too early for the other ones. I finally came out on Lott Road. I made a left hand turn on Lott Road and walked downhill about a half a mile or so. Then I started walking in the wrong direction until an elderly gentleman popped out of his house and I asked him. He told me I was going in the wrong direction and guided me back to the Backpack Inn which was just past the fire station. Getting back to the trail before I got here¢¦.The trail was really not that difficult. There were some annoying, steep climbs. One of them through rocks. The other one¢s were stuff that the ATC or whoever plans the trail through certain sections just decided to throw in because they felt it was more challenging. They have to get over this part of it because you don¢t need any more challenges than you already have. It¢s long enough to walk from Georgia to Maine without having to take you three miles uphill and take you back down to the road a 150 yards away from you went into the woods in order to take you across a service road three times just to have you walk six miles through boulders. That¢s screwed up.   Unnecessary mileage for reasons that some sadist at the ATC decided that they needed to put in there. The very last stretch coming into Unionville was a lot of marsh land. I want to call it something more derogatory but it really was very pretty. A lot of lilies growing out of the water. They had done a great job of putting a walkway through this whole area. Probably a total of 1 12 or 2 miles worth of walkway it seemed. Maybe it was shorter but they spent a lot of time elevating the path above all the water. It was a good thing because the water running through this section looked pretty disgusting. Every now and then it dropped down to places where there was a lot of mud and you had to walk through mud which I¢m sure is not usually there. This is just one of the rainiest seasons, I hear, on record. Even dry stuff was very wet. Not terrible. Not terrible like some places in Virginia. Some places in Virginia were horrible. They did a good job in New Jersey to make sure you stayed out of the mud as much as possible and that you stay dry. So anyway, the Backpack Inn¢¦¢¦I pulled in about a quarter to five or five o¢clock and ordered a beer and looked at their menu. There were a lot of locals hanging out at the bar with the New Jersey attitude that I noted earlier. They really didn¢t talk to you. They weren¢t rude but they weren¢t effusive either. A couple of people asked me questions and I answered them. They seemed to be satisfied and went about their own business. On about 6 o¢clock they were all complaining heavily about how hot is was. It was very hot. About 6 o¢clock or 6:30 some of the regulars (who had just decided to chip in) came in with a new air conditionerand dumped it on the floor. Everyone in the bar it seemed proceeded to start helping them install this air conditioner. By the standards of New Jersey or the standards of what they are used to it was just unbelievably, unbearably hot in the bar. The thermometer on the little gadget that I carry with me said 81.1 degrees inside the bar. It had read, at one point, 96.5 along the trail. I was really comfortable other than the fact that my chair was right beside the door. I ordered the sampler. It was 6 chicken wings ( I ordered the hot sauce), and you got to pick two other things that they had there. I ordered onion rings and steak fries. I got a half order of each. The onion rings were ok. The steak fries were excellent. I must be craving potatoes. They were just so good that I couldn¢t stop eating them. I sat inside until about 7:30. The grill and bar was getting very crowded and I didn¢t want to keep drinking. I didn¢t want to get drunk because I want to get up early tomorrow. I left and now I¢m sitting outside the hostel. The hostel is a very interesting place. You only pay $3.00 a night to stay here. It¢s connected right next to the bar and grill. It is about 4 feet deep and 20 feet long. It has room for about 4 people to sleep in a very crowded situation. I really don¢t care. I could frankly sleep out in the street. I¢ve gotten so used to sleeping with anything that has a roof over my head. It¢s a luxury. It has a screen door. The screen door has hole in it. The hole is about the size of the head of a bulldog that might have just decided to slam through there. I don¢t care. It¢s warmer and drier and more comfortable than most any place I¢ve slept in a long time. Other than being in towns. For $3.00 a night I¢m not gonna go hike up another mile into the trail and spend the rest of the evening trying to find a place to pitch my hammock, fight off the mosquitoes and sleep half way tonight and then try to wake up in the morning. So, I¢ve got time right now. It¢s a luxury that I don¢t feel I often have. It¢s kind of nice knowing that I don¢t have to be at a certain place at a certain time. I can get there tomorrow or the day after.   I can take 3 days to get there. I¢m gonna go in. I¢m gonna nap for awhile. I¢m gonna get up again. I may run inside and get another beer at some point. I may or may not wake up late tomorrow. I hear that the weather forecast says that it¢s gonna be a lot cooler tomorrow with periods of rain. I don¢t mind the rain as long as it¢s not too cold. It will be dropping off to about 80 degrees. The biggest issues right now are my feet and my blisters. I¢m having quite a bit of problems with them. I thought I had it solved today but after about 15 miles my feet were hurting. I ran the last 18 miles basically limping, grimacing and in pain. I¢d like to get that solved. I¢d like to be able to walk at high speed again at some point without having to feel that I¢m tearing something up. That is the record for today, whether I stay up or not any longer, I¢m outta here until the next morning.