Date: 2004-07-20
From: High Point Shelter 

To: Long House Road (Camping)
Miles today: 26.0

What a strange ending to a wonderful day.   OK, that¢s the headline, now here¢s the story.The morning was beautiful.   I headed out at my usual time leaving a full shelter of sleeping hikers.   The trail rocks had subsided and eventually replaced with boardwalks. We hiked over many very low, boggy, swampy areas and the only way to get through them was on miles and miles of lumber laid end to end which we step carefully along.   Very different from anything we¢ve seen.   One boardwalk was quite elaborate; it almost was a pier that stretched a couple of miles through a cattail swamp.   I saw a beaver¢s stick mound house along there.After a seven mile beginning, the trail came to the town of Unionville¢¦ only Unionville wasn¢t in New Jersey, but rather New York! Hey, how¢d that happen!?   I grabbed a pastrami-Swiss cheese melt and a whole bunch of other goodies for then and for later, at the general store-deli in town.   Then it was off for another twelve miles to NJ 94 road.   Yea, NJ means New Jersey¢¦ some how I was back in New Jersey!It¢s there that a great farmers market sits ready to sell their fresh baked pies. (Well of course I did¢¦ they didn¢t have apple, so I had an entire peach pie.)   What was next was none other than the steepest climb up Wawayanda Mountain. I haven¢t faced a climb this steep since Albert Mountain back in Georgia.   The good news was that it would only be another 5.3 miles to the shelter.   That translates for me, to about two hours.   Well, two hours came and went... then two and a half.   I crossed road after road, none were named, to my displeasure.   Then three hours and the hour of 7:30 pm drew near.   Some how, after sitting down with the maps, I came to the conclusion that somehow I¢d missed the shelter sign and by now was miles past it¢¦ wherever it may be.   I didn¢t have a clue, honestly!   I knew I was on the A.T., but nothing else.   The next shelter was too far for me¢¦ another twelve after the shelter I couldn¢t find.   I will go on record and say that the shelter marking signs in this area is the absolute worst I¢ve come across in the 1300 miles I¢ve now hiked!   The day before, while hiking with Amazing Grace, we both missed the shelter sign we had planned to have lunch at.   Both of us missed it¢¦ couldn¢t find it may be more appropriate.   These signs are not suppose to be a scavenger hunt!   In the meantime, I¢m in the woods, somewhere, darkness is coming and I need to do something very soon!!I pulled out my tent and that is where this is now being written from.   This is only one reason why it¢s smart to carry a shelter of some kind, because you just never know.   So, I¢m guessing that today was either a 26 or a 28-mile day?   The sound of a road, I can hear in the distance didn¢t have any identification on it.Now if all that wasn¢t enough to make my day full of texture, just two hours ago I walked around a bend in the trail and right up on a Black Bear. Yikes!!   It was a bold sucker, cause it only ran about fifty feet away and despite my yelling, didn¢t high-tail it away.   So, if it wasn¢t, I was!It¢s certainly not boring on the A.T.!   More tomorrow, once I figure out where the heck I am!