Date: 2005-07-09
From: NY 301

To: Morgan Stewart Shelter
Miles today: 16.0
Weather: light rain

What a difference a day makes. When I went to bed on my picnic table last night, I put on the radio and fell asleep to it. But before I did I listened to the weather report. It said that the rain was going to be stopping somewhere around midnight and the temperature would be up to 85 degrees. The reality is that it actually stopped raining around four o¢clock, maybe five o¢clock.   But the rain had definitely stopped.We still figured that we were going to get soaking wet this morning because of course the leaves are full of water. The wind blows them when you¢re walking along and it might as well be raining. You hit all the foliage with your body as you go along and you get wet that way. To top it all off, it was one great big cloud that we were in, in the morning.Despite all that, it was still a good morning to walk. We really didn¢t get too wet, and the dampness that we got on ourselves actually felt good and cooling. By ten o¢clock the sun had broken out. It made for a beautiful forest, with the remnants of a mist hanging through the forest, and the rays of light coming through the trees. I took a bunch of pictures of it. It¢s just beautiful. All the sparkling water. Droplets on the leaves. Everything was extremely green after a good rain.We did well this morning. Vern ran about twenty minutes ahead of me and I finally caught up to him. We walked into the RPH Shelter together. They had been advertising on cardboard signs the last couple of days along the trail that there was a project going on at the RPH Shelter. It means that they were doing maintenance, Trail maintenance or maintenance on the shelter itself. Along with that it said ¢food¢ on the bottom to either tell the through hikers to come in and help out or tell them there was food or whatever. We got there and there was a very large crew. There must have been thirty people milling around, carrying logs around to place on the sides of the trail leading up to the RPH Shelter. Apparently what has happened was that the Trail by the shelter floods when it rains so, they were lining it with logs and filling in between with gravel to raise the surface and allow for drainage. Luna was there; the gal who section hikes, who we met at Lake Teearotti. We were offered Famous Amos cookies and some Gatorade and Cokes. We took advantage of that and sat around.We had gotten in there around twenty of ten and they said that if we stuck around that lunch would be forthcoming. We decided that sitting around for two hours was not in our plans. After about 45 minutes we got up and started walking again. We got to the Mountaintop Deli and Market at New York 52 at exactly noon. Actually it is the Mountaintop Market and Deli with a pizza place next door, I believe called Tom¢s Pizza.I want to relay my experience there because it was very unfortunate and I have been guilty before of tagging entire states and regions as being this way or that way, so I¢m just going to stick to the experiences at this one particular stop. This is at New York 52, where you walk 4/10 of a mile to the deli and the pizza is attached to it.First thing we did is we went in to the pizza place to order two pizzas. Vern ordered black olive. I ordered anchovie and garlic. What was significant was that, as soon as we walked in the door, there were two guys working behind the counter. The first one was a guy probably 22 years old. In fact, maybe he¢d been a lineman for his high school football team and had spent the time since he¢d done that eating the profits from the pizza place, because he was a big boy. He just gave us the most vicious, unconcealed look of disgust I can remember getting from anybody. When we ordered our pizzas from him, everything about him, his body language; his tone of voice; the language that he used with us, just indicated that he thought we were just pieces of dirt. It set me back quite a bit.There are plastic tables outside the pizzeria, which have big signs saying ¢For Customers Only¢ underlined. I don¢t know if they¢re having a fight with the deli next door or if that is aimed at the hikers, but it is very clear that if you weren¢t going to eat something there that they were going to throw you out. And in fact, when we sat down, the other guy behind the pizza counter came outside to check on us and saw that we had decided to sit at the tables, and saw that his daughter was playing basketball on the far end of the parking lot. He called her in and stopped her from playing basketball as soon as we went outside. Very disturbing to both Vern and I.Then, we went next door into the Markettop Deli to get Cokes and stuff and the older lady that was there was pleasant. She was polite and everything, but apparently, she went home and they changed shifts. There were three younger men there and I went in about a half hour later to get an orange juice and one of the kids, who looked like he was in high school, practically ran around the counter, left a customer at the register, holding money in his hand out at him, ran around the register to go see what I was doing. He said, ¢Is there anything I can do for you? Do you need anything?¢ Very clear that he was thinking that I was going to steal from him or whatever. It¢s very disturbing to be treated like that. This place, I don¢t know if they¢ve had incidents with hikers before or what, they are distinctly unfriendly. More than unfriendly. Just rude.So anyway, we ate our pizzas. We sat there for two and a half or three hours or so outside, and the jerk, the fat ass kid from the pizza place, came outside to watch us and shake his head in disgust at us. I would have like to have smacked the shit out of him.At any rate, we finally got moving out of there. Our boots and everything were pretty well dried out. We got up and started walking again. That¢s when I found out that Vern had fudged the numbers, accidentally apparently, and instead of doing fourteen miles a day, we were doing sixteen miles, which was okay, because he said that¢s what I¢m doing to him and Albert the whole time. We got walking and we got up to the Morgan Stewart Shelter on about four o¢clock. Beautiful day to be outside, and we both pitched tents. Good breeze blowing. Good sun out.We met a French gentleman in the shelter who barely could speak English. It was his first day on the trail. He came off the Appalachian railroad station, which is up ahead here a little bit and we traded some information. He didn¢t know there were mice and there were bears which is kind of interesting. Then we showed him how to hang a bear bag.Also, Slow Barbara and her brother, Quarter of the Way, who had lost each other during the day, walked in. Barbara was down at the deli at one point, very worried about where he had gone. So, we went to bed. That was about it.