Date: 2013-07-12
From: 2 miles beyond Culvers Gap

To: Jim Murray shelter
Miles today: 18.2
Weather: light rain

I wanted to get started early because I felt kind of exposed so close to the Trail. It was not far from the lookout tower; so I thought there might be people coming up there. Soon I was passed by Honeysuckle and Gravy. They had stayed up by the tower. We leapfrogged each other most of the rest of the day. I would see them stopping to rest; then they'd pass me again soon after. Faster people get more rest than I do! ¢ that's part of the reality of AT. Anyhow, I didn't see very many other AT hikers during the course of the day.At the next road crossing, I stopped at the High Point State Park office, where they give a free can of pop to hikers & let them get water & unload their trash. Like some of other state parks, the State of NJ doesn't provide trash containers ¢ people are supposed to take out what they bring in. But for thru-hikers only, inside the HQ building they have a place where we can dispose of our trash.They have a copy machine too, & Gravy let me copy a few pages out of his guidebook with the help of the people in the office.   At least now I have something to go on for the next few days or till I figure out a different solution. A mile or so later, up near the High Point Monument, there's a look-out with some nice views. There's also a lake down below, where I'd been been told I could go swimming & maybe eat at the concession stand. So I went down, and it turned out to be a big waste of time. First-place, there's no easy trail to get down to it ¢ you can see it & hear kids yelling at the beach for some distance on the mountain, but I had to do some bushwhacking to get there without having to follow the roadway clear around the lake. When I got there, the concession was very disappointing: mostly prepackaged stuff of one kind or another and no place to put the trash. It seems like kind of a dirty trick ¢ I think the concessionaires should be required to provide trash receptacles even if the park doesn't. They COULD sell ice cream cones or something totally edible rather than things with all kinds of wrappers and non-biodegradable cups. I had stopped to eat at Mashipacong shelter earlier in the day. I whizzed by High Point shelter, which was not a very pleasant-looking place, and then continued on. This is where the Trail turns down the mountain heading East, following the New York - New Jersey State line.The Trail gets to be much more level ground for the next 20 or 30 miles, but then that means it's low ground, and some of it's kind of swampy. You really see many different sorts of trail going thru NJ. Some of it's nice dirt trail, easy to walk on, some of it's pretty muddy. To help with that, there are boardwalks of varying kinds. That's certainly evidence of a lot of work by Trail maintainers. Also it's a very narrow trail-corridor as well, so the AT crosses a lot of roads and passes fairly close to people's backyards in a couple of places. It does go through some kind of woods most of the time, tho there are a couple of farm fields as well.I finally stopped at the Jim Murray shelter which is a sort of cabin on private property adjacent to the trail. There I found Gravy and Honeysuckle, as well as several other people, and we had a pleasant evening there. No lights, but there are outlets to plug electronics into!