Date: 2011-06-13
From: Brad and Cari's Palace

To: Day 32
Miles today: 15.0

Thank you so much brad and Cari! We had a slow but unbelievably pleasant morning this morning. I think all of our heads were still in the clouds from the trail magic that we got yesterday. Evan Samurai, who has been out here since December, has never received and seldom even heard of trail magic of this magnitude. Brad had an early business meeting to get to in NYC so he offered to drop us off on top of Bear Mt. right where he had picked us up on his way. Unfortunately, the top of Bear Mt. was gated off because we got there so early so we were forced to yellow-blaze the 2 miles down to the park at the base of the mountain. We got there at 7:00 so we had a whole hour to kill before the P.O. opened at 8:00. We spent this hour smoking hash in a clandestine manner in the boys bathroom. You see, Green mile's sister Teen Bean absolutely can not find out that he smokes weed. He's had problems with drugs in the past and ended up having to do a stint in in-patient to shake his pill habit. So his super-religious family has come to the conclusion that he no longer can or should manage his own life. And if they knew he still smokes weed they'd most likely send him right back to rehab. (His sister has no problem with him blasting cigarettes every time we take a break though.) All of this makes for great fun every time we have a safety meeting because we always have to come up with new exciting ways to not get caught by Teen Bean. It's a great pastime really.    Anyway, after Belgian Chocolate, Teen Bean, Green Mile, and I got our mail drops we still managed to kill another 2 hours re-organizing our packs, mailing more useless pack weight back home, and rummaging through the hiker box we finally got moving around 10:00. This was exceptionally timed because this just so happens to have been when the trail-side museum and zoo opened. It's pretty neat that the AT runs right through a zoo but kind of strange that so many people will go to the AT to see animals in a cage but refrain from doing any actual hiking on the At to see animals in nature; it must be a New York thing. Nevertheless, it was pretty cool to see so many different kinds of animals in one place. I also saw my first bear out here! (Apparently I missed some bears back at the Delaware Water Gap by a matter of hours.) The bear cage is also the lowest point in elevation on the whole AT at 166 feet above seal level, which is pretty ironic for a number of reasons.   After leaving the zoo in a hurry at Teen Bean's behest, we crossed the mighty Hudson River on the Bear Mountain Bridge and immediately did a little 600' climb up to Anthony's Nose. The views of the Hudson up there were pretty spectacular. Later on we stopped by the Appalachian Market, which is essentially a little gas station with an attached deli that backs right up to the AT at road crossing. I'm not gonna lie, it was the best deli food I've ever had. There we met Inchworm and Sporocket, a couple of pretentious, patronizing, know-it-all, thru-hikers whom Teen Bean is desperate to get away from. As shallow and superficial as this may sound, it was kind of nice to have a little bit of senseless drama in my life again to serve as a bit of light entertainment. The 18 miles today seemed really short. We set up camp somewhere near Canopus Lake on the south side of 301. Hopefully our new friends will help BC and myself pick up our pace a bit.