Date: 2017-07-18
From: Deckertown Turnpike

To: Lott Rd., Unionville, NY
Miles today: 14.1
Weather: light rain

Today we managed to cheat the rain twice.  The AT passes through High Point State Park in Port Jervis, New York.  There's a sandy beach there for swimming, free showers, and a food concession stand.  We reached the park around 9:30 AM and headed for the showers.  It felt wonderful to get clean, even though I put on my same not-so-clean clothes afterward.  By 10:30 we were all showered, but the concession stand didn't open till 11:00.  We decided to wait.  At 11:05, when the stand still was not open, we asked a staff person.  She said that it often opened 15 or 30 minutes late.  Having already waited half an hour we decided to stick it out to in order to eat.  We ordered food and had just picked it up when the skies opened, and torrents of rain poured down.  A group of about 50 seven- and eight-year-old summer campers came rushing in, followed by their leaders.  The noise was amazing - so loud!  While we were eating I chatted with one of the group leaders.  She lives in Vernon, New Jersey, where the trail has a long boardwalk through some pretty terrain.  (Later I learned that we'll be hiking this part of the trail tomorrow.)The rain was still coming down hard when we finished eating.  A nearby hiker had checked the weather forecast, and the storm was only supposed to last an hour.  We decided to wait it out because we only had to hike eight more miles.  I think this is the first time on the whole hike that we've waited out a storm: we usually aren't anywhere that this is possible.  At the end of an hour the rain stopped, and we hit the trail again.  The second instance of cheating the rain was when we arrived at the endpoint.  Warren was waiting to take us to town for grocery shopping and dinner.  We heard thunder rumbling nearby. Bill and Terri set up their tents, but I decided to chance having to put it up in the rain later and didn't set up.  While we were in the restaurant eating the rain came down very hard.  When we got back to the road crossing where we were camping the rain had stopped, and the ground wasn't even very wet.  We were able to pitch our dry tents in dry weather.  This makes up some for the many days when we hurried to beat a storm but got drenched very near the end of the hike.  Highlights of the hike: We finally came to the end of the long rocky section that began in Southern Pennsylvania.  We walked through some very pretty fields and saw many wildflowers: Queen Anne's lace, bergamot, thistles, Deptford pink, milkweed,  and others that I've forgotten(see photo). We saw a touch me not that was a golden yellow, unlike the orange and lemony yellow ones I see in West Virginia (see photo).  One section went through a wetland via a long bog bridge (see photo above).  There we saw cat tails, skunk cabbage foliage, arrowroot, and swamp rose which had a delicate sweet smell.  I also saw two tall purple flowers that I've never seen before.  This section of the trail wanders along the New Jersey-New York state line, sometimes crossing, at other times approaching, and at still others running along the border.  Tomorrow we'll be crossing back and forth; on Thursday we'll leave New Jersey for good.  Tonight we're camped off the trail in Unionville, New York.  I'm set up on a cushy bed of moss. We picked up mail at the Unionville Post Office.  Thanks to Lizzie and Debbie for sending notes of encouragement and to Joan and Dennis for all the potato sticks.  They're one of my favorite salty snacks.  Three signs that we are approaching a road crossing: (1) we hear traffic noise, sometimes surprisingly loud; (2) we start seeing (and smelling) day hikers; and (3) we start seeing broken glass on the trail, which is otherwise remarkably litter-free.