Date: 2015-06-29
From: Camp site 1353.3

To: Camp site 1374.7
Miles today: 21.4
Weather: broken clouds

It had stopped raining sometime during the night.   However, we still woke to a wet tent this morning. Count had woken at 5:00. He dried the outside of the tent off. Then crawled back into the tent and went back to sleep. We were exhausted both physically and mentally from the last two days of hiking. We slept until 6:15 which is late for us. Because we had to have the vestibule of the tent closed from the rain, condensation had formed above the condensation cover. We dried that off. Then, we performed our daily tasks. The tent was fairly dry when we packed it up for the day.   We hiked, hiked and hiked as usual today. The weather looked as if it could rain today. We prayed for no rain. We started with fairly level hiking. We came upon trail magic within the first hour. A 2015 NoBo thru-hiker, Bloop Bleep, had left a cooler with Gatorade. We eagerly accepted the trail magic. We had a boardwalk trail through a nature reserve swamp area. It was amazing to walk on a level, smooth walkway. A local was walking. He was intrigued with our thru-hiking. He asked us all sorts of questions. He wished us well and we were on our way. We left the boardwalk and had more swampy area. Between yesterday and today, we did not know New Jersey had so much swampland. Guess this is why there are so many bugs in New Jersey. Thankfully, we haven't experienced too many bugs.    We quickly had a 900 feet climb in a bit more than a mile. It was on rock steps, named Stairway to Heaven. It was not a stairway to heaven that is for sure. A local was performing some trail cleaning. He said in all his years of cleaning the trail, today he found the strangest item. He showed it to us. It was an Icee. Of course it wasn't frozen. Apparently, the culprit had taken a frozen Icee on a hike but it thawed. Instead of taking it home, it had been thrown by the wayside.   We hiked on, taking a break at a lookout where we could see Wind Gap. We had been at Wind Gap last week. Crazy that we could see that far. It was a clear day. The rain had cleared the air. It seemed we could see forever.    We hiked on, climbing a bit. Count was in the lead. Suddenly, he started to fall backwards. Lavender caught him from tumbling down a rock step. Here, Count almost stepped on a rattlesnake on the trail. Obviously, he didn't care about falling. That was the lesser evil between falling and getting bit by a rattlesnake. While we were watching the snake. Two trail runners came running southbound. If we would have not been there, the snake would have bitten one of them. They were as shaken as we were. It was a very long, fat snake. We continued on hiking but we're talking about the snake and watching for more snakes.    As we hiked on, we saw two southbound hikers that looked familiar. Gigi and Magoo were doing some section hiking by using their cars.   We had first met them in Daleville as they were doing some section hiking then as well. They gave us some trail magic - crackers and cookies. We chatted a bit before hiking on.    We had a nice trail through an older forest for a few miles. We had more swamp area. Then, we decided to stop for lunch just past a road crossing with a rubbish bin. Yes, you know we don't like carrying rubbish. As we crossed the road, a car slowed down. They rolled down their window. It was Gigi and Magoo again. They were picking up their second car. They had sodas in their car. They offered us some. The third trail magic for the day. We had sodas with our lunch. As we ate our lunch and enjoyed the sodas we had our tent drying. We will have a dry tent tonight.   We hiked a few more miles, climbing up a few more rocks. Then we said goodbye to New Jersey as we crossed into New York. Now, we had New York rocks to climb. Climb we did. We actually had to do hand over hand climbing. And, there was a ladder screwed into the rocks. Yes, we climbed a ladder to go up one set of rocks. We hiked over the ridgeline of many, many rocks. It appears New York AT has to pass over every rock on the ridge of a mountain. We were so thankful it was not raining and the rocks were dry. If either of these factors were true, it would have been extremely, extremely dangerous. We saw our second rattlesnake of the day. This one was between the crevice of two rocks. Again, it scared us. We have seen enough rattlesnakes. We see none for 1365 miles. Then today, we see two.    We had a decent trail going to route NY17A. We were anticipating some ice-cream as Bellvale Farms Creamery. Just prior to NY17, there was more trail magic. This time there was a cooler with ice cold water. Of course, we drank a bottle of the nice, refreshing cold water. Then, we walked to the creamery and had some ice-cream. Yes, dessert before dinner tonight. And, the ice-cream was delicious. So, delicious, we shared a second bowl. Back to the trail we went. We had filled our water bottles at the creamery and washed up a bit. There was no need to gather and filter water. That saved us some time. So, we hiked a bit further before calling it a day. We were relaxing in our tent after we did our normal daily chores. It was dark and we heard something running through the woods by our tent. We didn't see anything but it did spooked us. Hopefully we will still be able to sleep tonight.