Date: 2005-07-12
From: Goldsmith rd. 

To: St. John's hostel
Miles today: 13.5

What a great day!!! Finally, our trio is back together....Mr. Clean, Jr. caught up with us today. It is so great to be hiking with him again. He has had quite a few adventures of his own in the time we have been apart, but you'll have to read in his journal to find out about those.The secret shelter was a beautiful place, and former thru-hiker Jim Murry is nice enough to lend the use of his property along with good water with his fellow backpackers. You must understand that water is scarce throughout PA, NJ, and NY. The shelter had an indoor and outdoor hot shower, a sink, and electricity. Although this place was wonderful in every other sense of the word, there were two very frisky and extremely noisy donkeys on the property. If you have never heard a donkey bray, it is much louder and obnoxious than the heehaw people usually try to imitate. This was amplified by the fact that they got out of their pen and we were in a valley where their loud braying echoed off the mountainside. At one point during the night, probably around 3am, Bug and I awoke to a donkey right outside of our tent, snorting, braying and carrying on. Talk about a rude awakening! We were trying to figure out exactly where they were when we heard Brandon yelling at them. This! went on continually through the night.This morning Brandon told us that the male was following the female around and not always being a gentleman. She got sick of it and let him know. They began fighting right outside of his tent and that is when he began to yell at them for fear they would fall into his tent. So we gave him his trail name this morning which he decided to take....DonkeyKong. He decided that was much better than what an alternative to that would be.About 1.5 mile from the shelter we walked into Unionville, NY to pick up our maildrop. There was quite a bit of food and we had to take time to sort through and bump some of it forward. Mama Love was so thoughtful to send us fresh blueberries from home, but they didn't survive the shipment well, so we picked through and ate the ones that were still good. Thanks also to Aunt Claudia for the yummy pumpkin bread.We had planned on making it about 5 more miles today, but when we talked to Clean and figured out where to meet, it was during the heat of the day. Once we met up, we contiued hiking another 3 miles across the New Jersey boardwalk---the seventh wonder of the world in New Jersey. It was pretty impressive (but hot and in direct sun) and stretched for at least a mile across a bog/swamp with cattails as far as you could see and bordered by mountains.Bug, Clean, and I finally reached the road around 4pm and made our way 2 tenths of a mile to Heaven Hill Farms vegetable stand. There, we split a quart of strawberry ice cream to cool down from the near 100 degree temps. Believe it or not, Bug was the one who suggested going into Vernon to the hostel there. Of course, Clean and I jumped at the opportunity. None of us could get motivated to do a steep 900' climb as hot as it was.A wonderful woman with her son stopped to give us a ride the 2.5 miles into Vernon. I can't say enough how wonderful it has been to be on the recieving end of people's kindness out here!There at the hostel we saw Mad Chapper, Bear Fodder, and Warren and Terry Doyle. We were able to get on the internet, do laundry, and get all of the day's sweat and salt off of our skin with a hot shower.We just got back from dinner where we ate huge calzones. I have found that most places up here don't believe in free refills, as I was charged for 2 "sodas". Oh well...a small price to pay for the energy.The plan for tomorrow is a super early start to avoid the crazy heat, so off to bed I must go!