Connecticut and Massachusetts

Connecticut

  So the trail through Connecticut is 51 miles.  I really enjoyed the 3 days that I spent there though!!  For a good portion the trail walks right along the Housatonic river and it was really flat and enjoyable!  Another gem in this state was the Toymakers cafe.  The owner allows hikers to camp behind the cafe... This is definitely a good business decision because in the morning any hiker that stays there is going to go in for breakfast!  I had a salmon and capers bagel and coffee and was filled with energy for the morning!  

Massachusetts

The trail through Massachusetts is about 90 miles.  After one day I was picked up and whisked away to Boston for an awesome couple of days off trail with my mom, her cousin Ruth, my sister, and her friend Sadie.  After the days off Ruth came out with me for 8 miles.  It was really fun to show someone else what I had been up to all summer and have a little company for the day (I also got a free lesson about picking an ear of corn). The rest of Massachusetts went by pretty quick, climbing to the top of Greylock (the highest point) and revisiting that and climbing the tower was definitely one of my favorite part.  

New York

The trail passes through New York for about 90 miles.  This took about 5 days for me and it was a bit funny to me how crowded the trail seemed to be.  There are many different reasons for this: it was through a weekend, I have began to hit 'the bubble' going northbound, also I am hitting the beginning of the southbounders.  The trail also passes through quite a few towns.  People told me that you could go get a deli sandwich every day from the trail in New York if you wanted... I managed to resist this urge.  

Other than the crowds, the trail in New York was kind of cool, lots of steep, rocky, quick ups and downs.  There were some awesome lake views.  At one point it went through a little zoo where the bears den marked the lowest point on the trail!  Just after the zoo, it crossed over the Hudson River.  

Although the amount of people was overwhelming at times it did provide some amazing trail magic!  At many of the road crossings in the first half of the state people had put out jugs of clean water, which was great because many of the water sources were absolutely disgusting!  Also one man put out an ice chest full of food, including fresh New York bagels!!  The best however was near bear mountain.., I came up on 2 young men singing and playing a guitar at around 8pm , I sat down, listened for a minute, clapped and then chatted for a bit, telling them I planned to just set up camp at a relatively flat spot on the way down the mountain.  One of them told me I could just stay at his place... This was a great offer, so I accepted and got even more than that!  This guy took me and his friend out to dinner, let me sleep on his couch, use his shower, then bought me breakfast in the way back to the trail!  The kindness of the trail community just continues to amaze me!!

New Jersey

The trail spends about 72 miles in New Jersey, which means I was only there for about 3 and a half days.  It was an eventful 3 and a half days though!  The entire time I was there it was either raining or threatening to rain.  This resulted in the swamps being very wet!  

The first night out I was staying at a shelter with 4 others, Patches (another girl), 2 younger guys, and an 87 year old man.  The old man headed out to get water and look for the privy and after about 45 minutes the 4 of us decided we should go look for him...  For some reason Patches and I were nominated for the search and rescue mission.  Luckily it only took us about 5 minutes to find him but he was in fact lost and very grateful to us for coming out and showing him back to the shelter... I felt a little bad that we hadn't gone out sooner.

One of the highlights of New Jersey was seeing the high point again!  I had driven there before but it was fun to walk the surrounding area and get different views. I also really enjoyed the boardwalks through some of the swamps and wildlife areas.  Other than the rain and the grumpy guy that owned a coffee shop right on the trail, New Jersey was an awesome state to hike through!

7 Down... 7 To Go

Pennsylvania is known for how rocky it's trail is.   There are horror stories from other hikers about this as you make your way toward the state.   I really didn't think it was that bad though.  There were definitely sections that were rocky but I found it kind of fun.

For about 5 days in the middle of Pennsylvania I was not feeling well.  This was at its worst during a zero day in port Clinton where I had a headache the entire day as I did my resupply and ran around town.  When I finally got back to the hotel at 4:30 in the afternoon I crawled in bed and stayed there until 6:30 the next morning... It was a really strange, long migraine!  I didn't feel completely better until about 2 days after that.  So in general my mileage was pretty low throughout the state and it seemed to take quite some time but I have been with a pretty great group throughout, mixed in with patches, Indy, and Sir Stooge (who got a bullseye, but no lyme)