Date: 2004-07-26
From: Rainbow Spring Campsite

To: Un-named campsite
Miles today: 17.2

Good Evening! I write to you at 11pm and I'm exhausted. After a day of goodbyes, fun, and randomness; my night has been filled with a mix of idiocy and adventure. Both are over now, however, and I am so ready togo to sleep. Before I do I will recount to you the first day that Beatbox and Sunshine have hiked together - what a day it was!   We planned on waking up at 7 am and leaving by 8 am, instead we woke by 9:30 am and left at noon . IN the process of trying to leave I never found my headlamp and Sunshine lost his cigarettes. We said goodbye to the gang, especially Gordy, and were about to leave town when a 2003 thru-hiker showed up with soda...caffeine...WOOHOO! After both engulfing a soda we finally left only 4 hours later than our orininal plan. Sunshine and I are clearly "brilliant"...this brilliance would continue all day.   We were pumped to finally be leaving the Water Gap. As we walked across the bridge out of town we both realized just how much we did not want to be walking. For 3 days my inactivity had done me in, for Sunshine I can only surmise that 3 whole pies in 2 days could not have helped. Still, we walked...right into New Jersey (State Number 8...yippee!). As soon as we waked across the bridge we stopped at the Kittany Point Recreational Area. Sunshine went to use a Port-o-John, while a mildly crazy park service lady handed me a survey to evaluate the park center. I explained that I had not seen the park yet since I was arriving. She asked me to look around then...so I could come back to her and complete a survey. Sunshine joined me to walk into the visitor center....then we passed the bathrooms on the left (he just used a privy)....brilliant! After we touched the snakeskins in the center exhibit we faked our way through the crazy woman's survey and left to hike.   As we started to climb it seemed we enterred a scene from the tv show "Wil and Grace". An Over the top amazing stereotypical gay male couple passed us. The larger male approached us and said: "What are you supposed to do when a bear comes at you?" Before we could answer his question though the other one dramatically shot back while contorting his body emotively: "Oh SHut up"...."Whatever"...."Just Hike On". With a wave of his hand and a toss of his head both were soon gone. Sunshine laughed in mild shock as we hiked on. In addition to the "Wil and Grace Couple" we also passed about 5 stereotypical "Jersey" Guests. Its amazing how much difference a state can make.   New Jersey, like PA, has rocks. Jersey however seems to have more hills and a little less of the actual rocks. The first climb was gradual and we spotted two deer on our right. Though both of us were in a daze...we kept pushing on. We had hiked 6 miles by trees and creeks when we reached the serenity of Sunfish Pond. There on the rocks we found Erica and Jess along with A-Dog, all taking a break. We decided to join them.   The Pond was beautiful. As we chilled, Eric, Jessica and Sunshine realized that they all had graduated from UNC Asheville in North Carolina. While they chatted I ate a candy bar and some crackers. A-Dog just basked on the rocks perpetually denying any inling he had to move. The silliness ensued. Eric and I had a rock skipping contest where half of the rocks just went "kerploosh"! Being "Brilliant", I decided we should each skip big rocks. I managed to skip a solid 8 inch rock and then nearly wet myself watching Eric try to throw a 2 foot wide boulder in with a whopping splash (and quite obviously no skip). Jessica was rolling in laughter as well. While there, we also saw a gorgeous view, 3 frogs perched on the rocks, and we yelled out words to listen to the echo..."Ricola". After yelling many random words to hear the echo, someone quipped that duck quacks do not echo...random. After recovering from some more laughter Sunshine and I entered the least productive conversation ever.Sunshine: How about we camp here?Beatbox: How about we do the 17.8 we said we would?Sunshine: Hey do you wanna swim?Beatbox: NoSunshine: We could stop in 4 miles...Beatbox: How bout we do that...and then hike 7 more milesSunshine:I haven't had a shower in 3 weeks...Beatbox: You'll get one in 3 nightsSunshine: I like to wear womens clothing (OK he didnt realy say that...but he's reading over my shoulder right now).The long story short is that it took us anouther 30 minutes of this fine discussion before we hiked on. When we did hike, Sunshine quite begrudgingly I might add, I proceeded to lead us directly down a path with no white blazes...(BRILLIANT!) It took us 10 minutes before we noticed and returned to the A.T. In the meanwhile we saw a bunny rabbit and a ton of blueberries.   We covered the next4 miles quickly. I tripped on teh rocks twice and when we stopped Sunshine discovered his lack of cigarettes. The Sunshine broke out the "Gummi Bears"..YAY! More rocks slid under our feet as we crossed a grassy ridge, both of us high on a sugar rush. When we saw 2 sectioners they said hi and asked:"Have y'all been hiking together long?" Sunshine answered them: "No todays the first day and its not working out too well." I laughed (I think he was kidding ) After a talk about girls and seeing a 3 inch long beatle we realized that we had in fact covered 10 miles for the day.    It was 6:30 pm but we had 7 more to do. We passed up a possible free campsite to push on. We figured we would night hike if neccesary. There were a few awesome ridge views and more grass then rocks (it's about time). At 7:10 PM 12 miles were now down as we reached a radio tower with a group from a local YMCA. Both Sunshine and I had to pick up our jaws after seeing the attractive YMCA leader in front of us. She told us where to camp as well as find water...but neither of us registered any of the actual information she relayed. Lets just say it can get lonely out here.   Dusk was approaching as we covered the next mile. The trail took on a gravel road and passed crazy orange mushrooms. with 4 miles to go we hit a road and I had another of my "brilliant" ideas: we should take a break now even though its still daylight....duh. The break was nice but unbeknownst to us would help bring us 4 hours of night hiking. We kept going strong though. As we started into the night it was sweet. We passed a huge pond with lilies and saw the afterlights of dusk from atop a ridge on a power line clearing. While there, we reflected on how awesome it is to be where we are, and how important it is to just soak in our current situation rather than stress about the future that awaits us after the trail. All of these reflections though, would soon be interupted by some more "brilliance".   Night was now upon us and I was truly missing that headlight that had disappeared in the morning. Of course hiking at night without it was another of my brilliant ideas. After tripping on multiple unseen obstacles we reached a tree painted in red in the dark. "NOBEBOSHO". With no clue what that meant Sunshine turned right toward a white blaze and I followed. We proceeded to blindly follow a steep barely trod upon trail (We practically needed a few machetes at one point). Beatbox:"Hey maybe its a relocation (still brilliant). We walked 200 yards off a side of a mountain and suddenly the blazes were both white and red now..."CRAP!" For the first time all day we did something that involved a mild amount of actual inteeligence...we looked at our map. We had clearly followed the campsite trail for Camp Nobebosho, which was why we had tripped and fell halfway down the mountain in the dark...ugh.    Delighted with the ful accumulation of our briliance for the day, we bushwhacked our way through the night back up to the A.T. There we found the real A.T. white blazes and walked on singing "Camp Nobebosho" songs. At 10:45 we reached a "No Camping" for 4 miles sign and set up camp right before it. All told we covered 17.2 miles today, hiked for 2 hours missing a flashlight, took 2 wrong turns where we were completely lost, and had a generally "brilliant" day" It was all hillarious. Now our tents are poorly set on a poor excuse for a campsite...and were headed to sleep. Out goal is 25 miles tomorrow for K-less Birthday...but we know how our goals go. It should be funny...Goodnight, Beatbox   ttt