Date: 2006-06-01
From: Morgan Stewart Shelter

To: Wiley Shelter
Miles today: 16.6
Weather: scattered clouds

9:13 p.m. Before I begin: to be honest, I stole this pen from a shelter register. And I love it. It is an excellent pen. But I'm not as horrible a person as I sound, because the shelter had at least 2 pens in it. Anyway, yesterday the only reason I didn't write was that I was out of paper in my old journal. Now I have a new one, and plenty of room to write (and weight to carry). Because we pulled up short and camped, we had a lot of miles to do yesterday. We got a pretty early start and Kaptain and I did 15 miles by 1 o'clock to the RPH shelter (a nice shelter with 4 walls and doors, and a covered picnic table etc.) The only stops we really made in the morning were to get water and then briefly on a mountaintop. At the shelter we relaxed, had lunch, and waited for Lockjaw to arrive. The plan was to wait out the heat of the day, then hike 5 more miles to a store, then after eating dinner there, hike 4 to the shelter for the night. As Kaptian was about to leave RPH (and Lockjaw and I surely would have been close behind) a car pulled up to the nearby road crossing, and a woman named "Sox", who thru-hiked last year, gave us maybe the best trail magic of the whole trip. Cold drinks, snacks, bananas, and trash removal. We all talked for quite a while, and then when she heard our plans for the afternoon, she offered us a slackpack for the 5 miles to the road crossing with the store. It was about 3:45 when we left the shelter with just poles, and sure enough, she met us at Rte. 52 with our stuff, then gave us a ride to the store/pizza place, then waited and ate with us, then drove us the .5 back to the trail. It was an amazing afternoon, and one that made the big-mile day a lot easier. When we had hiked the 4 miles to the shelter, we had it to ourselves and spent the night, although none of us slept particularly well. This morning we got up pretty early (Lockjaw was a bit grumpy about it) to hike about 8 miles into Pawling to resupply. At the road crossing was the Dover Oak, a tree slightly bigger than the Keffen Oak, making it the largest tree on the trail. From there, we got an amazing hitch (again! we have such amazing luck!) from about the second car to pass. The man took us to the grocery store (which was well out of town), then came back for us. We then went to the P.O., where I had 6 packages (various things from myself, my parents, plus my hammock). We sat outside sorting our stuff, then hit the library for a while. It was extremely hot (about 90 degrees), so we decided to wait out the heat for a long time. We ate lunch at a terrific deli. We hung around more, went to the library again, then at about 4:30 ate dinner at the deli. We got a pretty quick hitch out from a woman who wasn't even going to go past the trail, and hiked out about 5:15. We weren't sure if we would make our 12 mile goal, or pull up short after 8. As it turned out we only did 8. It was getting dark and was raining, thundering, and lightning off and on, so we stopped with 3 guys out for a weekend. They're nice, but kind of hopeless. They don't know how to work their stove, and I almost burned my face off with a fireball trying to help them. They have a dog, too - Dora. She's cute.