morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2012-07-21
From: Vernon, NJ

To: Wildcat Shelter
Miles today: 17.1
Weather: overcast clouds

With the cold front that blew through the previous day, it brought glorious weather! We got up and ate breakfast. At the hostel, there was a hiker named Rampage, with his girlfriend Mango who was slackpacking him, Apollo, Embassador, Franklinstein, and Blah Blah the whole way to Maine. After dropping them off at the trail, she came back and gave the rest of us a ride back.The climb up the mountain was called "The Stairway to Heaven". It wasn't so much of a stairway as a rockscramble straight up the side. Just after the top was a side trail to a state park where we stopped for second breakfast and water. We ran into Apollo attempting to do the 24 beers over 24 miles in 24 hours challenge. It was 10am and he was already looking really rough.The trail started finding all of these very large rocks and took us up and over all of them. While difficult, it was actually fun to do some bouldering and break the monotony of hiking. We crossed the state line, and shortly thereafter came up on top of a giant rock and could see the NYC skyline!! My camera wasn't good enough to pick it up, but it ran almost the whole length of the ridge in the picture. It's crazy that those buildings are taller than the "mountains" we were on top of. We also got to watch planes on their landing approach, so they were pretty close and very large in the sky. You can see an incredibly zoomed up photo of the skyline on Slowfoot's blog:http://rausundweg.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/new-york/That evening we hit another road crossing, where Mango and Rampage were waiting on the rest of their crew. They gave us a cold soda! We then walked a short ways down the road to the Bellvale Farms Creamery. It was an all local, organic place that sold ice cream. We knew it was going to be good because the place was PACKED. It was the best ice cream I've ever had. It had a slightly different consistency too, which probably is evidence that it's much more real than the store bought stuff. Definitely worth a visit.After that it was only 2 easy miles to the shelter. Basically everyone from the hostel but Rampage's crew were there. Slowfoot and Pain were there talking about some of the differences between Germany and the US. In Germany, you need a lisence to do anything. Kids get bicycle driving lisences. If you want to buy a chainsaw, you need classes and a lisence for that. To go sailing, you need three or four lisences, for the boat, for the radio, etc. That's crazy!
Date: 2012-07-22
From: Wildcat Shelter

To: William Brien Memorial Shelter
Miles today: 19.6
Weather: overcast clouds

Today was a very fun day. It was almost as much bouldering as it was hiking. The trail went over all these large rocks that required some technical hand-over-hand climbing. It was a little scary coming down but definitely much more interesting and engaging than just wandering through mile after mile of trees. At one point the trail crossed a usually very busy 4 lane highway. It's like playing live action Frogger, but thankfully today was only level 1. Immediately afterwards, I entered Harriman State Park which was a really cool place to explore. The forest floor was very open, and was filled with these very large outcroppings that gave a maze like feel if you went off trail. Of course the trail went over instead of around, so it felt a bit like cheating the maze.One rock was called the Lemon Squeeze. It was a large crack in a very large rock, and the trail went up through the crack which got pretty narrow at the end. I had to take my pack off and throw it on top of the rock to squeeze through. Then it went up a steep slope to an 8' cliff. I had to throw my pack up on top of it just to climb the cliff. The first time I threw my pack up, it fell off the side and down 30 feet to my horror. It was easy to get down there though. It was laying on a blue-blazed trail called "The Easy Way," but at that point my pride wouldn't let me be defeated by a little tiny cliff. The second attempt was a success thankfully and I got up.From there we took a side road down to Lake Tiorati. We took a swim in the lake then showered. The showers were right in front of the doorway, no curtain, the shower head was aimed at the face, and was either off or on fire hose. It was not very helpful but with the quick dry clothes and some sun I was feeling much better. Then we pigged out on soda and ice cream from the vending machines. Around 6:30pm, we figured it was time to get to the shelter and hiked back up the road. Rampage and Mango were there and greeted me with another cold soda!It was only a few miles to the shelter. I stayed there with Jiffy-Pop, Slowfoot, Pain, and some lady who seemed very confused. She got out of bed to thank me, because she saw me wearing my head lamp and it reminded her to look for hers in her pack. She did a lot of taking a few steps, looking around, taking a few steps in another direction, looking around, etc. The shelter was also very nasty, so I tented and opted to leave my rain fly off to keep some ventilation in my tent.
Date: 2012-07-23
From: William Brien Memorial Shelter

To: Greymoor Friary; Old West Point Rd
Miles today: 16.5

So anticipating no rain, I had thrown attached my rain fly to only the very end of my tent, and left it lying in the grass. In the middle of the night it started to drizzle so I hastily pulled the fly up over my tent and secured it. The drizzle quickly stopped and I relaxed and went back to sleep. Around daybreak, the skies opened with lightning all around. My rainfly was definitely not secured properly as all of my stuff got pretty wet. I don't think it was pulled taut enough and so water wicked through the rainfly where it was touching the walls of my tent. Slowfoot had set up his tent in a low spot, and eventually the water built up so high that it came up over the waterproof walls and pouring into his tent. Thankfully he managed to throw everything into his pack and run to the shelter before his stuff got majorly saturated.Once the storm blew over, we ate breakfast and hiked out. The trail went up this huge steep hill covered in now very wet steep rock faces. It took a lot of effort to get feet to good foot holds to climb. Once we made it over the top, we found a side trail that led right back to the shelter, that would have been 10 times easier. Grrr. The trail continued to be more of these large rocky humps, though not as difficult, until the ascent up Bear Mountain, which wasn't really all that much of a bear.At the top were soda machines! Also a tower with a view of NYC on a clear day (not clear enough this day). We enjoyed the soda break and threw all of our wet stuff out in the sun to dry out. Afterwards we hiked down the mountain and stopped at the Bear Mountain Inn for lunch. It was fairly expensive, and the ingredients were very fresh and oragnic, but our burgers needed some kind of seasoning. It was a disappointing burger. After that, the trail crossed the road and went right through Bear Mountain Zoo. The zoo is free to hikers and donation based for all others. They only housed native animals and had very few live exhibits. It was more of an overly labeled nature walk than a zoo. They even had signs identifying "Bare Rock". There were some coyotes, foxes, bears, turtles, and snakes though. The bear exhibit was a particularly low point. Besides the depressed bears, it was only 124' above sea level. From there we crossed Bear Mountain Bridge over the Hudson River, and up the next mountain.Getting over that mountain brought us down to the road where there was a convenience store with a deli, the first of a series of "a deli everyday" throughout the state. Dinner was delicious. Then we walked a few miles further to where an order of Franciscan monks allows the hikers to stay. It was a pavilion in their ball field (I didn't know monks played sports) with a spigot, sink, and cold shower. We all had a good time there, and I fully secured my rainfly that night.
Date: 2012-07-24
From: Greymoor Friary; Old West Point Rd

To: RPH Shelter
Miles today: 18.8
Weather: scattered clouds

Woke up and hiked. There was a road crossing with a pump house with spigot for water. All of the natural water sources in NY have so far either been dry, or nasty black water. Thankfully, the trail is so close to the coast that there's been enough civilization to get water out of spigots. And in case you avoid civilization, there are many trail angels who leave water at road crossings. I only treated water once in the whole state.It was nice out and so I stopped there for lunch and took a nap. When I woke up, John Wayne was there interviewing other hikers who had stopped for lunch. He's hiking and getting 7 hrs of college credit towards his outdoor ed degree and will write a paper on the motivations of thru-hikers who make it all the way. Unfortunately, classes started a lot sooner than he anticipated so he will not get to finish the trail himself. Slowfoot was also at lunch and he was feeling really crummy. We think that he had caught my cold.The trail did have a nice flat part that seemed to follow a very narrow gauge railroad bed as stone bridges were built over small hollows and ravines to provide a perfectly flat surface only about 2 or 3 feet wide. After that was a side trail down to a lake with short order grill. The side trail looked hastily made. It went along the steep banks of the lake without cutting in to make it flat, with large rocks to clambor over without falling into the water. The interesting part is that it was labeled as a cross-country ski trail. I don't know who would XC ski on such a rough trail.The food was good and reasonable, and when they closed they gave us a huge plate of left over french fries that were delicious. Jiffy Pop had planned to do 25 miles that day, and did the 14 miles there by 12:30. But then he went for a swim in the lake, had a nice shower, ate delicious food, and couldn't bring himself to leave until I was ready to leave, around 6pm.The cabin was a nice renovated cabin with bunks and a porch. One guy was there who had just started the trail that day in NY, and was hoping to make it to GA before winter. He had started with a 105lb pack, and gotten it down to 80lbs by the shelter. We were all eating lots of his food to save him weight and giving him all sorts of tips. He was a really cool guy too.
Date: 2012-07-25
From: RPH Shelter

To: Pawling, NY; County Rd 22
Miles today: 17.5

I woke up and it was 5 easy miles to a deli. They had free wifi there so I wound up getting sucked in catching up with everyone and the world. I didn't leave for 7 hours, enjoying two meals and seeing lots of hikers come and go.I hiked to the next shelter where I cooked dinner. I got the crazy idea to night hike again to the shelter just shy of town. I left at 7:30pm with 7.6 miles to go. The night hike was beautiful, with a great stars/town lights view from atop a mountain. Unfortunately, in the dark I never found the shelter. It was supposed to be right on the trail, which it wasn't, and the trail had recently been rebuilt making it unclear where the turn off was to it. I realized my error when I got to the road at around 10:30pm. Town was 3 miles away, which seemed like a better walk than trying to climb a mountain I had already climbed, looking for a shelter I couldn't find. The town was supposed to have a park where they let hikers sleep. I stopped at the first park I found, but there were signs saying that it was for town residents only and that there would be YMCA youth camps in the morning. I didn't feel like walking around town at 11:30pm trying to find a second park so I just crashed there, setting an alarm clock to be out before the kids showed up.
Date: 2012-07-26
From: Pawling, NY; County Rd 22

To: Pawling, NY; County Rd 22
Miles today: 0.0

I woke up to more rain. At least I was tenting under a pavillion tent and so my stuff was dry. Still, the kids were going to arrive and I had to walk the rest of the way into town in the rain. The whole day was spent eating and using internet at various places with Jiffy Pop. I even watched a Netflix movie called The Way with Martin Sheen. It is pretty good, and is about the next trail I want to thru-hike, El Camino de Santiago.The library closed early all of the sudden because a huge storm blew in and they didn't want lightning to blow any equipment up. So I had to walk in the huge storm to the other park where we were allowed to sleep. Thankfully the town constable picked me up and gave me a ride. When I got out, he told me that if I needed anything, his phone number was 911.
Date: 2012-07-27
From: Pawling, NY; County Rd 22

To: Mt. Algo Shelter
Miles today: 20.5
Weather: light rain

I walked back to town with Badger and Jiffy Pop. We grabbed breakfast at a deli and then hitched out of town. The guy who gave us a ride was from the Bronx originally and was excited as he had never picked up a hitchhiker before. A few miles down the trail was a road with a mobile pizza kitchen. I was hoping to buy a soda off of him, but I remembered when I got there that I didn't have any cash on me. He wouldn't let me walk away from him, and so he wound up giving me a free slice of pizza, can of coke, and snickers bar! He was a very generous man, and I would be grateful if anyone stopped and gave him some business if they're in the Pawling area on NY 22.After entering Connecticut (!), the trail followed the banks of the Ten Mile Stream and the Housatonic river. It was a fairly warm day and I hadn't seen any other hikers in awhile, so I started looking for an out of the way swimming hole to skinny dip. Thankfully I never found one as I came around a corner and there were families everywhere, running up and down the trail to get to their favorite spots.After the river, I ran across the Mango shuttle with everyone (Rampage, Apollo, Embassador, Franklinstein, and Blah Blah), and so I sat and had lunch with them. Afterwards, it was a tough seven miles to the shelter. Along the way I passed an older gentleman who seemed to be really struggling and slightly confused. He was worried about making it to the road before dark where his wife was waiting. Slowfoot and others were all at the shelter, along with a bajillion feasting mosquitoes. Around sundown, that older gentleman was yelling questions at us and seemed even more disoriented. Other hikers didn't really know what was going on and responded to his bizarre behavior with shouts of a derogatory sort. I was trying to yell helpful and encouraging things, but he still managed to walk to the shelter, and was surprised that it was the shelter. As he only had 3 tenths of a mile left, I'm pretty sure he found his way to the road. Hopefully some rest and some food will clear his mind.
Date: 2012-07-28
From: Mt. Algo Shelter

To: Kent, CT; Toalston's House
Miles today: 0.3

It was a short hike in to town, where I met EMT and Miles Supertramp (no relation to Alexander Supertramp) over breakfast. Then off to the Post Office for some exciting mail: new boots, a post card from Alicia with a picture of the magnificent HS in Winchester, VA, and a care package I sent myself from my borther's in PA. It was wonderful to walk without feeling every little pebble on the ground!The plan was to hike 17 more miles and then get picked up by a friend of a friend of a friend sort of situation, but it started to rain and didn't show of any signs of letting up several hours, so I stayed put and let them pick me up in Kent. At camp, I had briefly met a woman who had a nephew in CT and she volunteered them to host me. The nephew was unable to host me that weekend, so his wife's sister offered to host. Thus I met the Toalstons. They lived an hour away in New Brittain, CT but had gotten engaged near Kent. Thus, we made an excursion to the covered Bulls Bridge with dam and beautiful waterfalls.After that it was back to their house for a shower, laundry and a relaxing evening.
Date: 2012-07-29
From: Kent, CT; Toalston's House

To: Kent, CT; Toalston's House
Miles today: 0.0

Today was a chill day. I went to a church service with Ben and Julie-Ann, where a man walked up to me, was surprised I had cut all my hair and touched the back of my head asking where it went. Almsot everyone I've ever met thinks I look JUST like somebody else they know. Clearly he thought I was that someone else. I must have the most generic face ever, despite a not generic height or distinctly colored beard.Anyways, after lunch I took a nap on the couch. I awoke to find Julie-Anne's sister had been there for awhile with her 2yo son. I must have been really out of it.After dinner, it was time to pack up and get ready to leave in the morning. I had a very relaxing time and I enjoyed meeting this wonderful family.
Date: 2012-07-30
From: Kent, CT; Toalston's House

To: Pine Swamp Brook Shelter
Miles today: 18.0
Weather: light rain

In the morning, Julie-Anne and her father drove me back to the trail. We said our goodbyes, and then I was back to climbing mountains. A few miles in, there was a sign that read "St. John's Ledges," immediately after which the trail took a turn to go down the mountain. Gulp. This was a very steep and difficult descent, and it probably took me 30 min to only go a few tenths of a mile. At the bottom was a group of middle school girls with a camp, waiting their turn to rock climb up the cliff face. They were full of all sorts of questions and kept me there for a full 20 minutes.At the bottom, it was a 5 mile walk along the Housatonic River which was wonderfully flat, and incredibly buggy. These were the little black bugs that swarm the eyeballs, occasionally diving in to their death. Thankfully I had sent myself a head net in my care package and it was wonderful. That is until the five miles were over and it was back up the mountain. Those things are very hot. It is also easy to forget you're wearing one and hock a loogie. That was gross.Later in the day, the trail crossed a stream. Hurricane Irene last year had messed up the stepping rocks and the only way across was to ford it. The water was knee deep and moving very swiftly and I didn't really trust my crocs to get me across successfully. Instead I took the mile road walk detour, which also made the climb up from the creek gradual rather than 70 degrees straight up. The trail was very quiet today. The only hiker I saw was SOBO. I even had the shelter to myself.
Date: 2012-08-06
From: Dalton, MA; The Birdcage Hostel

To: Dalton, MA; The Birdcage Hostel
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: broken clouds

After putting in some serious miles the past few days, John Wayne and I talked each other into taking a zero day here at the Bird Cage. I pretty much spent the whole day eating and hanging out at the library to use internet. We did go back to the AYCE buffet place. I also got to watch a little bit of the summer olympics, diving I believe. I also participated in a video interview for a group of SOBOs making a documentary. It sure was tempting to zero another day, but tomorrow we hike!
Date: 2012-08-09
From: Stratton-Arlington Rd

To: Manchester, VT
Miles today: 17.5

Today was by and large a non-descript day of hiking. Crossing Stratton mountain was another firetower. Being so close to Glastenberry mountain, the view from this tower was largely the same. In fact you could see Glastenberry tower from Stratton. Sadly, the clip on my waistbelt snapped today so I had to lug the whole thing with nothing but my shoulders most of the day. That got old pretty fast.Thankfully, that night we all camped at the road going into Manchester, VT. I was able to get to an outfitter to replace the clasp. I was also able to resupply at the grocery store and hit up the WiFi and fake real food at McDonald¢s. Lo and behold, Miss Janet was in the parking lot at the shopping center, and she agreed to drive back up to the trail and camp with us. I also ran into DK and some other hikers I hadn¢t seen in FOREVER.P.S. I decided to not mercy kill the baby mouse like I did the baby rabbit back in VA. Sorry mouse, you'll likely get eaten alive by a snake, unless your momma comes back and finds you.
Date: 2012-08-11
From: Danby, VT

To: Danby, VT
Miles today: 0.0

Today was a zero day. My lady friend was meeting me in town at 3pm. While my hiker friends had been giving me the old ¢nudge, nudge, wink, wink¢ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGrvQ1c5khU) for the past few days, her family and friends back home were giving her lectures about running off into the woods with a man who was ¢clearly¢ lonely and in love with her.None of my hiking friends wanted to zero in town with me, so I had the day to myself. I spent most of the morning and afternoon lounging around the Yellow Deli hostel using their internet. One of the cultists who was managing the hostel that day offered to make me a tomato sandwich. Somehow in my 28 years of life, I had never heard of such a thing, and frankly it sounded terribly drab. Maybe it was soaked in Yerba Mate tea? They¢re obsessed with that stuff. I first encountered The Yellow Deli at Trail Days in Damascus, VA way back in May. They were giving away Yerba Mate tea everywhere and trying to sell everyone on its amazing ¢benefits.¢ Regardless, I¢m a poor homeless hiker. I couldn¢t say no to free food. Turns out, the proprietors of a vegan restaurant can make a mean sandwich, probably in the top 5 sandwiches I have ever had up until this point in life.Mindy was right on time. I met her in the Wal*Mart parking lot in Rutland. The first thing we did is bought all of our food for the next 7 days. Afterwards we just explored town; nothing of note apart from an arts & crafts fair. That evening, we met Tom and his wife at Applebee¢s for dinner. I had arranged with Tom to shuttle us. Mindy could keep her car at his house. He would drop us back off on the trail near Danby, VT where I had left off. Once Mindy¢s time was up, he would pick her up wherever we were at on the trail.Afterward dinner, we followed them back to their house and settled in for the night. Tom was a huge war buff. I am not, but I do play an extremely detailed WW2 board game (e.g. any model of vehicle that saw action in the war, regardless of nationality has pieces and special rules for that vehicle), so we chatted a bit about that. They also have a German shepherd that they affectionately referred to as an Alpha Bitch. They spent considerable time and money to properly train her. One time they were hosting an exchange student for a semester. At first, the dog treated the student with respect as a guest. After about two weeks, the dog realized he wasn¢t really a guest any more. She decided to put this student in his place. She waited outside the bathroom and as soon as the student came out, she lunged at him. He panicked and fell back into the bathroom slamming the door. The dog then looked at her momma with this sly grin. The next day, the dog and student were off to the dog training school.