"It's easier to go down a hill than up it, but the view is much better at the top."
-Arnold Bennett
Start: High Point Hotel
Finish: Pochuck Mt Shelter
Today: 14.1 mi
Total: 195.5 mi
What a great night sleep. We've enjoyed a few more hotel stays than planned but we might as well take advantage of them now before they are few and far between up north. At 10:30 AM, when the restaurant opened, we called for a pizza. Since pizza is such an important trail food and breakfast is the most important meal of the day, we thought it was a good match.
One of the caretakers of the hotel, Ron, gave us a ride back to the trailhead. He is an incredibly nice man and while talking to him about bears, he told us a story about one that calmed Heather's fears. One day, he told us, his friend's 8 pound dog was yapping away in the house. The dog would not stop barking at the front door so the owner finally let him out. This tiny dog shot after a bear rummaging through the trash and chased this 600 pound bear straight up a tree. The dog watched the bear intently while jumping 4 feet straight up and down, barking. Finally, the owner had to go to the tree and drag this tiny dog back into the house. The terrified bear was safe.
We hiked up and over New Jersey's highest point and across the NY / NJ border several times today. We won't leave NJ and enter NY for good until Thursday. It always feels like such an accomplishment to make it to a new state or throw away one of your old map sections (which happened again today!).
We arrived at the Murray property just as we were running out of water. This has been a hot, dry summer and many of the streams have dried up and the ones that haven't dried-up look like stagnant pools of muddy water. So we've been hiking with a ton water from one reliable source to the next. 1 L of water weighs 2 pounds and during some stretches we've had to carry as much as 4 or 5 liters each. We filled up with nice, cold well water at the Murray's spigot.
The second 7 miles alternated between mountain climbs and flat sections around a lake. A couple of miles before finishing dark clouds approached with the threat of rain but they passed by and we escaped dry. The gray clouds that followed brought us light rain that felt good against our hot, sweaty skin. With only .5 miles to go the skies opened up and rain poured down on us. We couldn't rush up because this last section was a steep, and now slippery, climb. We arrived at Pochuck shelter drenched but it was full of hikers so we waited under the overhang for the rain to slow and set up our camp. We changed into dry, comfortable clothes, checked for ticks and went to bed.
~DADDY LONG LEGS
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