Date: 2007-10-04
From: Williamsburg

To: Unionville, NY
Miles today: 0.0

Back on the trail! My flight from Williamsburg to NYC went well, and I was able to navigate through the City pretty easily to get back to the trail. I arrived back in Peekskill, NY, where I got off of the trail, to find my pack just as I had left it, at the local outfitters. Many thanks to Terri, the owner of Hudson Valley Outfitters! I went to the post office to mail home the duffel that I had flown with, and the guy at the post office wouldn't give me a few inches of tape so that I could tape up the box that I had bought. There was an old woman also in the PO who then asked the dude behind the counter, Walt, for some tape, and he gave it to her, so she helped me tape up my box, and I was on my way. Stupid bureaucrats. The day was short, at only 8.6 miles, because I didn't actually get back onto the trail until around 2. Terri gave me a free ride back to the trail so that I didn't have to spend another $20 on a taxi, which was very nice. I made it over the Bear Mountain Bridge at 4:28, and the back entrance to the zoo was already closed, so thankfully I didn't have to see the poor bear that they've got in a dog kennel-sized empoundment. I've seen a video of it just slouched over, not moving for a good five minutes, and it was kind of depressing. There were tons of Hesidic (?) Jews at the Bear Mountain Park, which was interesting. I'm pretty sure that I was the only non-Jewish person in the place. Some girl asked me if I was Jewish, half-way up the mountain; not sure why. I should have said yes to see what would happen, maybe some free food! I arrived at the top of Bear Mountain to find the water shut off, and had to shell out $5 to buy four 20 ounce bottles of water...grrrr. I walked about 300 yards south of the summit and set up my tent in a little grassy area that looked out to the west and had a nice view of an interstate and the sunset. I had to listen to cars all night, but once the sun went down, traffic seemed to ease up a bit. The 2nd was my first whole day back, and I did around 19 miles, which is a pretty good day. Unlike when I got back on the trail after taking 3 zeros up in Maine, I didn't experience any shin splints on other aches and pains, as I had sort of expected. Early in the morning, towards the bottom of Bear Mountain, I came across a sign that indicated that where I camped the night before was illegal...oh well. A guy stopped on a road that I was walking on and asked I talked to him about hiking on the trail. He's a teacher from NYC; it would be quite the change to go from teaching in NYC to hiking the trail, especially from the stories I hear from Michelle! I spent another night alone in the tent, camped alongside a little lake that was full of geese and ducks, so that was pretty cool. The water tasted good, which surprised me. I passed a couple of shelters, and came to the realization that I'm pretty close to the tail end of the pack of Southbounders. It seems as everyone that I've hiked with in the past, and even people that I had never heard of, are in front of me.October 3rd brought be into New Jersey...good old dirty Jersey! To make things even better, I got to eat lunch at the Bellvale Creamery, which had amazing ice cream and was only .3 miles off of the trail. There were quite a few rocks coming across the hills, which was no fun. I came across a section hiker, the first person that I had seen since getting back on the trail, and he was from Pennsylvania. He said that the rocks in Jersey are worse than the rocks in Pennsylvania. There were some pretty nice views from the rock ledges that we were walking along, and I saw a huge black snake that had to have been close to 6 feet long! The state line was just painted on a rock, and I took a picture with one foot on each side because I was bored. I spent my first night in Jersey, alone (of course), at the Wawayanda Shelter. I cooked up some cous-cous that I'd had since before Andover, Massachusetts, so it was nice to get it out of my food bag!I awoke nice an early the next morning and was in the middle of packing up when I hear footsteps. Jersey has the highest density of bears on the east coast, and I automatically thought "bear!" I looked around the corner of the shelter, and was relieved to see a person instead of a bear. He was just as startled as I had been, which made for a good laugh. The visitor was the shelter's caretaker, and he comes to the shelter a few times a week! He had gone NOBO back in the late 90s, and since then has been volunteering with the NYNJTC. He asked if I minded if he walked along with me for a mile or two from the shelter, and I obliged...it was nice to be able to talk to someone. We talked about all kinds of stuff, and he told me about what a process it was to build the mile long boardwalk. I grabbed ice cream, again, at a farm stand that was near by a road crossing, but it was not nearly as good, and the portions were much smaller than at the Bellvale Creamery. I got a cool picture of a praying mantis eating a grass hopper, and when I got to the end of the mile-long board walk, there were two ladies there, one with a kid in a backpack. I walked the whole length of the boardwalk with them. One of them has good friends in Fredericksburg and had spent some time this summer in Williamsburg. I was moving right along on my way to Unionville, NY (the trail is in Jersey, but it's right along the border, so you walk across into NY to go to Unionville). I got to the first road crossing before Unionville, and mistook it for the road to Unionville. I was walking alongside the road, and after about a hundred yards, I realized my mistake and sat down on the guardrail for a second. This beat up Chevy Blazer drove by, pulled a U-turn and came back and stopped in front of me. The person didn't pull of the road at all or anything, just stopped there blocking the only lane in that direction. He rolled down the window, and asked if I was going to Unionville, I said yes, but that I had accidently picked the wrong road. He offered me a ride to town, anyways, which I accepted. He put the truck in park, still blocking traffic, and jumped out to help me load my pack and things. I asked him if he knew the mayor (the mayor of Unionville is known by word of mouth along the trail to be incredibly friendly and will take you to his house to feed you and shelter you). He replied that he did, and that he was the mayor's right hand man. He introduced himself as Butch, a name I recognized from shelter registries from NOBOs who had been through town. Bruce ran me into town, and I hit the PO, where my repaired pack was waiting. I switched out my pack and boxed up my loaner and sent it back to Gregory. As I was standing in the grass next to the PO, a car pulled up and a man got out. He asked me if I was a through hiker, and I said yes, and asked him if he was the mayor. He said yes to that, and we talked a bit about the trail. About that time, Butch came walking across the parking lot, and flipped the mayor off with both hands. The mayor threw up both of his middle fingers, and I started to sense an interesting working dynamic between the two! I turned down the mayor's offer to bathe, eat and sleep at his house, but Butch did take me to the grocery store to resupply and get contact solution. When he was backing out of the parking spot, some lady backed into him, and he got out cursing, but she admitted it was her fault, so he jumped back in, still curseing, and did a burnout in the parking lot...it was great! I hiked a few miles out of town to a "secret shelter" that's not really secret, as it's in the guide book. It's heated, has electricity, hot water and a shower, and is owned by Jim Murray, who hiked back in '89. I took a very nice shower, cooked up dinner, and fell asleep with a fan blowing on me, listening to the two donkeys that were pastured next to the shelter go crazy.