Date: 2016-06-08
From: Campsite at mile 1353

To: Tenting at Wawayanda Shelter
Miles today: 8.7
Weather: broken clouds

My alarm went off at 5:30 this morning and I surprised myself by actually getting up. I told Dr. fix it that I needed a little bit of time to finish writing in my journal to you and he went back to sleep asking me to wake him up when I was done. About an hour later we got moving out of the tents and started hiking by 7 AM. We walked along a series of wooden boardwalks as you can see in today's photo through a wildlife preserve. I had just sat down to take a break when my oldest daughter, the one that's getting married at the beginning of next month, called me for some advice about a business lease she was getting ready to sign. I enjoyed talking with her and really appreciate the fact that I'm able to stay connected with my kids, share my life and adventures like the Appalachian Trail with them, and hopefully give them some tips on how to live a happier life. After about 4 miles of hiking we came to a road crossing at which point I asked Dr. fix it "does this road have food?" Which is kind of a joke because any road will lead you to food if you go far enough on it. Luckily for us just 800 feet up there was a place called Heaven Hill Farm which had really good apple cider, coffee, and donuts. We knew it was supposed to rain and maybe even hail today so we took a look at the storm coming in and decided to shuttle from here and move our car North while it was raining rather than hiking out into a pending storm. So that's what we're doing right now is waiting for the shuttle.Oh yeah, I was gonna tell you about the bear bag incident last night. Dr. fix it is really funny how he has his own way of doing everything and also kind of amazing how the methods he's developed are really cool and work very well. This applies to something as simple as putting up a bear bag. He has something he calls the Pacific Coast Trail method where he throws a rope over an extremely high limb, pulls the bag up in the air and somehow put a stick in the line which keeps the bear bag up in the air without having to tie it to another tree.The advantage of this is some of the Bears around here have gotten rather smart and they've learned that if they smell food they can go around and scratch at all of the trees nearby and eventually end up breaking the rope causing the food bag to come down. With Dr. fix its method they can't do anything except maybe try and pull on the rope which is impossible for them to do with their big bear hands. So as I looked over last night, Dr. fix it it had taken a rock, put it into his carefully prepared Cuban fiber bear bag rope bag which he had handcrafted at home and probably uses for for five other purposes as well. Then he somehow managed to toss this thing higher in the air than I've seen some fireworks go. I don't know how he managed to do it because he told me the rope was only 45 feet long but he hooked the bag over the limb of a tree which must've been at least 75 feet high. Then his lightweight rock bag wrapped around the limb and got stuck.He pulled on it for a while before giving up and melaconly walking over to his tent to start getting dinner ready lamenting that he had lost his favorite bear bag rope. Once I had my tent up I went over to give it a try myself. After pulling on it for five or 10 minutes with no success whatsoever I was ready to give up myself. Finally I pulled all the slack down and then put a loop in the rope and carefully managed to step up with my good leg (of course) into the loop and thrust all of my bodyweight down through the loop and into the rope. The tree limb reluctantly let go and Dr. fix it's beloved bear bag rope came rocketing down to the ground. "Oh thank you thank you flash 52 - I can't believe you retrieved my rope" said the relieved Dr. fix it. So that's the story about the bear bag incident anyway. I hope you can see now why I didn't want to get into this yesterday. We plan on hiking back out this afternoon after we move my car further north. I hope you're having a great day and staying warm and dry matter no what you're doing today. Update: We avoided the rain storm today with perfection. It rained like crazy while moving the car and shuttling back. The rain stopped right before we got back so we hiked another 5 miles to reach the shelter where we've put up our tents for the night. I'm thrilled to report that my leg and foot felt really good today... Better than any other day so far on the trail. The Appalachian Trail really is healing me.