| Mile | 1424.6 |
| Miles Since Last Update | 20.8 |
| Day | 109 |
Trail miles != miles walked. By a long shot. My pedometer shows me having done over 26 today.
Slept poorly last night because of a damn whippoorwill right above me (fuck birds). Still woke up early enough to catch some neat sunrise action on the skyline.
Got turned around again getting back on trail. The blazes here are incredibly jank because of constant reroutes and are generally poorly placed. That cost me almost a mile of detour out the gate, and precious time before the heat set in.
Still managed to climb bear mountain pretty early. It was p smooth and the views were ok. West was better.
Coming down from the mountain there was a detour around some construction happening. Farout comments said sometimes there was an open footpath through it but I guess we lost that dice roll today. More extra miles. More burned time.
The trail then routes through a real pathetic zoo. The zoo wasn’t open for another 30 minutes when I got there. I chose to just wait it out rather than add on more miles with yet another detour. More burned time. The zoo is the lowest point on the AT and I’d been told would be a guaranteed chance for me to see a bear on trail. The bears had all died however, so it was empty.
Crossed the Hudson River to the next section of trail. By this point it was well into the 80s and I was feeling incredibly shitty. Notyet passed me here as I limped along best I could.
Caught up with him at a nice little gas station deli. We stayed here for an hour or so just sitting in the shade. I bought a little bit of resupply and some deer (fuck the environment, I don’t care about cancer or whatever, I just need bugs to be dead).
The next 9 miles were grueling and uneventful. I did a road walk for the last 4 out of desperation, but I don’t know how much it really helped. We are camped next to a pretty crappy spring, but it is water, which is hard to come by around here now.
Today was hot. I feel wrecked. Tomorrow will be hotter. It will be shorter miles but I have little hope of it being an overall better day. The forecast doesn’t show it getting much cooler anytime soon, even as we make it further north. Bailing in Kent is very much still on my mind. We’d be there Friday. Notyet says I should at least wait until Great Barrington so I can knock out one more state. Iunno about that but we’ll see.
I hope that when I look back on this experience I’m not remembering days like today.