Date: 2016-07-10
From: Mohican Outdoor Center

To: Campsite
Miles today: 11.5
Weather: broken clouds

Breakfast took a while. There were only two options at the outdoor center, one being an egg, bacon, and cheese sandwich, but they were out of eggs and bacon... The Crow and I both had the pancake breakfast with sausage subbed for the bacon and sausage subbed for the eggs... :-/Took at least 45 minutes for our food to come out, but I enjoyed it when it did. I was already packed before I left my room, so while Crow packed I stayed in the dining room with Meli who was having her breakfast. She's a pretty neat chick, and it was a Georgia's day. I was so tempted to stay another night and spend the day at the outdoor center reading, swimming in the lake, eating real food, etc. But Crow had other plans.When I got back to the bunk house he was bugging me to leave. Seems he decided that we were going to take a blue blaze trail that paralleled the AT for about three miles before meeting back up with it. This was a little weird, we've never hiked together, we've just ended up at several shelters together. We get along great, so it wasn't a problem, but still weird. It didn't take me long to figure out what was going on... The Crow has a very real fear of bear. NJ is very known for their dense bear population. He was using me!!!We finally set off about 1130 down the road, but the track we were walking let to a swimming beach on the lake. A sign!!! Crow wasn't having it. I tried to convince him that we should hang around for the day and enjoy the lake, but no, all these hikers want to hike. We ended up having to bushwhack to the trail. He didn't really believe that I knew where we were going until we got there. To be fair, it did take a while tracking our way through Rattlesnake Swamp, but what's an adventure without a little adventuring?!?The trail we took, Rattlesnake Trail, was actually very nice, and not too many rocks! We made good time the first few miles with me in the lead. At one point I surprised a little garder snake in the trail, and it surprised me right back! We both (the snake and I) jumped about a foot in the air with a scream. Well, I'm sure it was doing the snake equivalent of screaming. Crow got a big kick out of that.It was a pretty nice trail today. Still rocky, but not nearly as bad or as constant. This afternoon we had some weather come in on us and rushed to put up my rain fly to sit under and wait it out. It ended up only sprinkling for a few seconds, but the atmosphere sure felt like it wanted to do more. It was a nice break nonetheless, and gave me a chance to eat lunch which I had not bothered to do when we stopped at the previous spring.It's nice hiking with someone. We chat, we sing, we are silent. It helps me keep up my hike because I don't feel like I can take all my little, unnecessary stand up breaks where I stop and ask myself again "Why am I doing this?"Some nice views today, but after the first 10 miles my feet were aching pretty good. We stopped at a campsite to assess. We considered camping there as we were another four miles to the shelter. The site was on a blue blaze to Buttermilk falls, the highest waterfall in NJ. Would have been cool to check out, but the campsite was hardly off the AT and the falls was another two miles down the blue blaze. Easy call, we weren't hiking 4 miles for that!Some kids came up during our break and reported a bear cub about a half mile down the blue blaze. I looked at Crow and told him we would find another place for him to camp. So we continued another 1.3 miles to a site near a small, low stream. We were joined by Uncle Spider, Reptar, Single Sally, Limey, and eventually Tree who had taken a couple of days to go to a Phish concert in MA. Hey Girl and her hiking partner as well as Herstory passed by heading for the next shelter. We had considered doing the next 2.7 miles, but I had been starting to take stupid steps and didn't need to keep going.Feels like it will be a fairly chilly night. Should be good sleeping weather.