Date: 2003-08-04
From: Shenandoah Tenting Area

To: Nuclear Lake, NY
Miles today: 15.0

We were thrilled to wake up in a dry tent under the pavillion in the Tenting Area even though it had been raining all night. Unfortunately our clothes weren't as dry, so we had to put on damp clothing -- yuck. It started raining as soon we hit the trail, soaking us in no time at all. When we got to the shelter 1.3 miles away, we found out that Sleepy Floyd had indeed stayed there last night, but he was already off and hiking, so we didn't get to see him. We plodded on in the rain.Not only were we wet from the rain, but it blocked any views we might have had. About 6.4 miles in, we came to NY52, with a deli and pizzeria a mere 0.4 miles away -- we needed to raise our spirits, so we headed there.We got to the pizzeria at about 12:30 & found Floyd already there. It was excellent, and we had a hard time tearing ourselves away -- our quick lunch break turned into a 3-hour break, during which we consumed 5 slices of pizza, 3 liters of soda, ice cream, and a cookie -- 42 wishes she could say it was all Moo, but she had her fair share. The rain actually stopped for a while, but just when we were thinking of packing up and getting back on the trail, the skies poured down buckets of rain -- 42 and Sleepy Floyd even toyed with the idea of calling it a day right there and finding a hotel somewhere, but then the rain lightened and Moo urged us onward. We hitched a ride back to the trail at about 3:30. Our original goal for the day was to make to the Telephone Pioneers Shelter, but that was almost 12 miles away and seemed unattainable after our extended lunch. Sleepy Floyd decided to go for it and his long legs quickly carried him out of view. We weren't quite as quick or energetic, and we decided to hike until we wanted to stop and just camp wherever.We were in need of water and stopped at a stream very close to NY55 -- the road that leads to Pawling, NY, where there are motels.... It was getting dark and the mosquitoes were out in full force, and it was raining again. This time, it was Moo who was leaning toward hitching in and getting a room. 42, strangely enough, wanted to keep on going, and she spurred us on to do a couple more miles. So we kept on hiking. At about 8:15 we arrived at the shores of lovely Nuclear Lake. We weren't going to let the fact that it was the site of a nuclear-research facility that was shut down in 1972 deter us from camping there, and we pitched our tent. Whether it was b/c of the wet conditions, the fact that we were near a former nuclear plant, or because we were so sweet-smelling, mosquitoes were swarming around us, making putting up the tent pretty awful. We decided to skip cooking dinner and just shoved down some power bars, granola bars and twix bars and jumped into the tent as quickly as possible. But we weren't fast enough -- a couple of mosquitoes got in there with us, but soon they were just bloody corpses speckling the Zoid (42, a vegetarian, was a bit horrified by the joy she got from getting those buggers).It was not the greatest night's sleep for either of us. We kept the fly up b/c it was really hot and humid out, but rain threatened thru/o the night, so we had to keep our ears open b/c if it started to rain we'd have to close the fly. All around us, the woods and lake seemed to come alive with nocturnal activity. Something was up in the trees, continually dropping branches & other tree debris on the ground. Frogs were croaking & playing their banjos, ducks were quacking & honking, owls were hooting. Some kind of animal made fierce-sounding, huffing noises -- we had seen a deer do that in the past, but we didn't get out of the tent to check it out. We heard a loud crash not too far away ... all in all, not the most relaxing night we've ever had. We were both kind of relieved when morning arrived, expecially when we saw that our food bag was still intact and had not caused the crashing noise.