Date: 2008-06-11
From: RPH shelter

To: NY county road 20/Pawling
Miles today: 17.0

Not quite so hot today, and that made hiking much better, and my mood was much improved. Yay!Pawling sucks as a town to get off trail for. If you were thinking of taking a day off, do it in peekskill. You will have multiple hotels to choose from and still have access to metro north trains. Pawling has nothing but some camping sites a long walk from town and a super expensive b&b. The library was nice and helpful, and chris's deli was yummy, but beyond that, avoid pawling if you can. It's also a long walk from the road crossing, and we ended up calling a cab to come get us. Sharadu b&b is closed. Also one of the outfitters is closed, and the remaining outfitter was useless when i talked to them on the phone. We ended up down in Armonk, ny, because we could afford that hotel... barely. It's not close to the train though, so we have to use cabs. What a day... let me recap for you....We got up wicked early, and were on the trail by 5:45 this morning. Thunderstorms and rain had come thru last night, so it was nice and cool hiking! Yay! The trail was nice to us today... 2 big climbs, but nothing overly steep, and no rock-climbing was required, and a lot of smooth trail. So we made good time. We would have averaged about 2.5 miles an hour if i didn't keep stopping for breaks. But as it was, we finished our 17 miles by 2:45 this afternoon. We had some nice views today too.We got to ny county 20 and contemplated going an extra 2.4, but decided not to because we needed to get our mail drop. So we called the outfitter about a shuttle, which was mentioned in our hiking books. They didn't. We called 411 for a taxi... and got the number for a poughkeepsie taxi company. Not very useful for PAWLING. Knuckles had to get on the phone with her husband who was on the google machine to find a cab company... oh yeah, and hitchhiking is illegal in ny, and i would guess so is picking people up because cars were flying by us at 70mph. Eventually we got into pawling and got our boxes and got some food. Yum!Then we started trying to find a place to stay. The b&b listed in our books was out of business. The other b&b has a special hiker rate of 140 a night... and she was going to let us stay there and split the room until she realized it was 2 guys and a girl. Then she got uncomfortable and wouldn't let us split a room. sigh...So then we tried calling another local hotel, the dutchess motor inn, and they never called back or answered their phone. aiya! So we went to the library to the google machine. I emailed a local friend, who had some suggestions, but they didn't work out, so we started looking for hotels along the towns on the train route. We finally found one we could afford. (i have a friend in NYC, but i didn't call her because i didn't want to impose on her, being all stinky and needing large amounts of space to spread out. I also didn't notify her beforehand of the plans since i didn't know for sure what we would be doing. Next time i will have to see if i can impose... next time... next time...)So we are at the la quinta inn in armonk, ny. Still off the train route, so we need taxis, but affordable. We got our laundry done and got ourselves cleaned up too.Tomorrow is a zero day, thank goodness. I hope my feet can recover. They still hurt. It's the same pain as before, but i also have some impact pain under my big toe from pounding down the steep NY hills. I am going to try to find new boots at EMS and resupply my medical gear. I really need foot tape and ibuprofin and body glide. Other than that, we will meet up with a friend who has tomorrow off of work anyway and just wander around the city eating. I am so looking forward to getting a mega-sized jamba juice.So now that we are almost out of NY, i would look back and describe it as very pretty but a mix of PA rocks and the steep ups and downs of GA. Don't go in expecting an easy walk.Okay, time for some sleep.