We got up and on the trail pretty early today to make up some mileage and get closer to Dalton, MA, later in the week. The skies were threatening almost from sunrise on. We broke camp and got some hiking in before the storms, though. We had a lot of cool sun and mist coming off of the Jug End.

Jug End misty morning

The descent was pretty steep and rocky.

We hiked through a few scenic fields early, too.

Massachusetts fields

A mile or two later, we hiked through a very neat pine forest. It was, however, inhabited by the most amount of mosquitoes I’ve ever seen. They were literally just swarming around our heads and packs. Thankfully the 100% DEET mostly works. As soon as you start to sweat it off though, the little blood suckers are on you. I thought the woods in PA had a lot of mosquitoes in the summer, but Connecticut and Massachusetts are way crazy worse.

Shortly after we went through Bugville, we got a couple big thunderstorms. We were under the forest canopy, but one thunderclap and lightning strike was really close to us and scared the living crap out of us (strangely enough, this improved my stench).

A lot of the hiking also was super muddy. I don’t know if it’s just because of the storms or if western Massachusetts is always just a giant bug swamp.

It was a tough day with the weather being uncooperative, the constant bugs, and the mud, but we hit our 20 mile goal. We camped not too far past the (swampy) East Brook. More storms are threatening for tonight and tomorrow, so that should give us some more muddy Massachusetts fun tomorrow. Oh yeah, I got stung by another yellow jacket today. I don’t know why those things have so much beef with me.

Vital stats for Sunday, July 27th :
Miles hiked today – 20.4
Mood – not bugging out
Physical state – tired from being extra careful on the wet and muddy trail today
Smell – a wretched concoction of wet dog, DEET, sweaty man stank, and Ramen noodles
Song stuck in my head – Matthew James by Bad Suns (can’t get this damn song out of my head)

We ate breakfast at Maria’s house this morning. She gives hikers 3 eggs each, toast, coffee, and fruit. She set everything out for us to make it ourselves. So freaking cute. Here she is with her friend Stefania.

Maria is wearing white

After breakfast and a bunch of chatting, she then gave us a ride back to the trail head so we didn’t have to road walk. It was around 10am by then, so it was much later than we’d like to have started, but it was well worth it because Maria is so awesome.

The hike was pretty nice today. Other than a tiny sprinkle of rain around lunch, the weather was perfect. We had some nice views from Bear Mountain and then later a lot of good ones from Mt. Race as we crossed into Massachusetts.

View from Mt. Race

We also went through an area called Sage’s Ravine, which was really pretty. It had some falls and other scenery that reminded me of the falls trail in Rickett’s Glen State Park in PA.

Sage's Ravine

We later had a pretty good climb up Mt. Everett. It was fairly steep and rocky and I think indicative of some of the more challenging mountains to come in the near future. The elevation is also getting slightly higher now, as the climbs today were finally back up over 2000 feet in elevation for the first time since PA. We can also faintly see some of the bigger mountains off in the distance now to the north, which is so exciting.

Due to the late start, we didn’t get quite as far as we would have liked. We should be able to make it up pretty easily in the next few days, though. We found a nice breezy stealth spot up near a vista called the Jug End. Tomorrow we continue the trek through Massachusetts.

Vital stats for Saturday, July 26th :
Milestone – done with Connecticut, now in Massachusetts (10 down, 4 to go!). Also, 1500 miles hiked.
Miles hiked today – 15.8
Mood – excellent
Physical state – good
Smell – straight up DEET (lots of mosquito up in here)
Song stuck in my head – see awesomeness below
Rap –
Every 500 miles
I drop some dope freestyles
I usually rap on a log
to a frog but not on the blog
But for fifteen hundo
I’m giving you my thundo
So I ain’t got no streets
To drop all my dope beats
I just got gnarly trails
Filled wit bears, snakes, n snails
So just got 600 left to go
To work on my rap flow
By the time I be on Katahdin
Ya head be weaving and bobbin
Some of deez mountains be so sheer
When we climb we ain’t got no fear
Gonna be a rapper for ma next career
Peace out, time to grab a beer

We took a leisurely approach to the day since we only had 4 miles to hike. We usually get up via my wristwatch alarm at 5:30 or 6:00am, but today we just slept in until the sun and birds made enough light and noise to get us moving. That ended up being near 8am, which was way later than I thought it would be, but was also really nice. The hiking was pretty easy and smooth pine forest again. We had more views of the upcoming mountains from a spot called Rand’s View.

Rand's View

The rest of the hike to town was uneventful. We road walked around a mile to town.

Salisbury is a quaint and tiny little town. It seems to have a fair amount of tourists rolling through. It kind of reminds me of a town like Lewes, Delaware, minus the beach, of course. It’s also pretty crazy expensive compared to some other trail towns. There aren’t any motels, hostels, or hotels in town, but a couple nice older ladies rent rooms to hikers. We are staying with a woman named Maria McCabe who was originally born in Germany. She’s a super cute old lady who is really nice and is hosting a childhood friend from Europe, who can’t really speak much English. Two interesting factoids that will only make sense to the Hnatow’s – her friend’s name is Stefania and Maria is like a German born clone of Mrs. Eagleton. It’s amusing to listen to them jump back and forth between a little broken English, German, and Italian. We got groceries, lunch, and iced coffees in town and spent the day doing a combination of planning for the next few weeks and straight up relaxing. Maria drove us to Lakeville to do laundry and get dinner at Mizza’s pizza, which was good stuff.

Tomorrow we head back to the trail and keep pushing northward.

Vital stats for Friday, July 25th :
Miles hiked today – 4.8
Mood – relaxed
Physical state – good, ready to keep moving forward
Smell – clean as a whistle
Song stuck in my head – Matthew James by Bad Suns

Wow, we hit 100 days already since this insane adventure started way back in April. That’s crazy. I can’t believe we are over 2/3 done already.

Last night was a good night to stay in town, as we had some severe storms roll through. Power went off and on a few times at the motel. We binge watched American Ninja Warrior. That looks like it would be rad to try. I’m sure I would fail miserably!

Anyway, today was a total opposite of yesterday in terms of hiker weather. It was perfect for hiking. We had a nice breeze and high 70’s all day. Fantastic. I think it majorly helped break our funk by having an afternoon off and a beautiful weather day today. We road walked back to the trail around 9:30am. We had a few small steep climbs again, but they were easier because it wasn’t 200 degrees. We had a view to the north of the upcoming Berkshire range in Massachusetts. We’ll be hitting those this weekend. It’s nice to see some bigger mountains again.

Berkshire Mountains seen from Northwest Connecticut

If you look closely, there is a race track in the valley in the picture above. It is the Skip Barber racing school according to Google Maps. We could hear the cars screeching around the course for a few miles.

Later, we hiked along the Housatonic River again. This time we came close to an impressive waterfall.

Housatonic River falls

We hiked up past the river and camped near the summit of Mount Prospect in a nice pine forest. It’s another spot that would be really awesome if it weren’t for the hoards of mosquitoes!

Tomorrow we are taking a planned nearo and resupply day in Salisbury, CT. We only have 4 miles or so to get to town, so it’s really close to an actual nearo for us, not one of these 15 mile “nearo” days that we were doing in the past.

Vital stats for Thursday, July 24th :
Milestone – less than 700 miles left to Katahdin
Miles hiked today – 16.6
Mood – great
Physical state – normal
Smell – tolerable, and I’m going to shower again tomorrow, a rare feat of showering more than once a week
Song stuck in my head – Hannah Hunt by Vampire Weekend

Today was insanely hot and humid. It felt like an oven out here on the trail, making even the relative short climbs of Connecticut tough. Fatigue was setting in quickly today. There are definitely some steep chutes here, though, in particular a descent near something called St. John’s Ledges. I’m not sure if I’ve ever sweated that much in my entire life. To make things even more pleasant, the mosquitos and gnats are just out of control here. Yuck.

On the positive side, a good 4 miles or so cruised along by the Housatonic River, which was super flat and easy hiking.

Trail with the Housatonic River in the background

We decided to call it a day in the early afternoon because it was so hot, there are a plethora of small towns around here with places to stay, it was predicted to storm pretty hard (it did), and because we can do whatever we feel like doing on any given day (one of the best things about doing this). We road walked the mile or so into the tiny town of Cornwall Bridge and got a room at a small motel called The Hitching Post. It’s not as bad as it sounds. The shower (I took mine very, very cold) was amazing.

Vital stats for Wednesday, July 23rd :
Miles hiked today – 15.3
Mood – much better after a nice cold shower
Physical state – good
Smell – a lot better than this morning
Song stuck in my head – Lost In My Mind by The Head And The Heart

We had something rustling around last night near the tarp. I was in a bit of a coma, so I didn’t react much, but Trippy heard it. It went away though, so nothing really came of it. However, as we hiked away from the lake in the morning, we saw the biggest bear we’ve seen to date (#12) lumber across the trail. He just kind of sauntered along at his pace and didn’t care about us. For fear of mauling, I didn’t get any good pictures. We wondered if he was our nighttime neighbor, though. Yikes.

Anyway, here is the lake.

Nuclear Lake

The weather was really hot and sweaty today. We passed by the Appalachian Trail stop on the metro North NYC train. You can ride it all the way to Grand Central. I don’t think we were dressed appropriately for Manhattan.

Appalachian Trail train station

One cool thing we hiked by today was the Dover Oak, considered the largest and probably oldest tree on the AT at over 300 years. It’s right off a road, so it’s not in the nicest setting (like the Keffer oak back in Virginia), but it was awesome nonetheless.

Dover Oak

Throughout the day, we hiked into Connecticut, then briefly back into New York, then back into CT for good. The trail does this, we were not being indecisive about what direction to go in. We hiked past the Ten Mile River and hung out there for a while because it was a nice spot that wasn’t too buggy.

Ten Mile River

We camped a tenth of a mile or so from the (final) NY – CT border near a little stream. If it weren’t for the insane droves of bugs, it would be a really ideal spot.

Vital stats for Tuesday, July 22nd :
Milestone – finished NY, now in CT (9 down, 5 to go)
Miles hiked today – 20
Mood – morale was a bit low today with the sweltering heat and tons of bugs. We think we’re fighting off our “Virginia blues” late, since we had PA to look forward to through VA. However, it feels great to check another state off the list.
Physical state – tired from the heat, but fine otherwise
Smell – giant vat of sauerkraut mixed with ammonia
Song stuck in my head – Cardiac Arrest by Bad Suns

We had another day of pretty good hiking weather. The temperature stayed relatively cool until mid afternoon and even then it wasn’t too bad. We left the state park in the morning and had a view of the lake on the way out.

Canopus Lake in Clarence Fahnestock SP

We then had a small climb up to Shenandoah Mountain (there sure are a lot of things named Shenandoah).

Shenandoah Mountain, NY

We then chatted with some other thru-hikers at the RPH Shelter. The growing sentiment seems to be that most of us are excited to get further north and back to the bigger and more scenic mountains. All in good time though, it will be here before you know it.

We popped into a pizzeria a half mile off the trail for lunch. They were a little unfriendly towards us hikers in that the dude told me he’d bring the pizza outside to us, which we took as a hint that we shouldn’t sit inside (not really a major problem, it was like 100 degrees in the place). Maybe he wasn’t being a dick, but it came across that way a little. Oh well, it happens. The food was still good.

Most of the hiking was similar to yesterday – nice, but not overly scenic. We stopped and made camp within sight of Nuclear Lake. Yea, this is a real thing. Apparently some company did contract nuclear experiments for the government from the 50’s to the late 70’s. I guess they got some plutonium powder in the lake during an accident. Oops! Tastes fine to me… It’s actually really a nice little peaceful place. I haven’t taken a nice pic yet, but it looks similar to the lake pic up above.

Vital stats for Monday, July 21st :
Miles hiked today – 19.1
Mood – radioactive
Physical state – good, except for the 3rd eye now growing on my ear
Smell – pure uranium
Song stuck in my head – Love Story by Taylor Swift (ugh)

We got a ride back to the trail outside the Bear Mountain zoo area again from the owner of the motel around 8:45am. It was nice to get some iced coffee, bagels, and donuts in town first though.
After the zoo, the trail crosses the Hudson on the Bear Mountain Bridge.

Hudson River from the Bear Mountain Bridge

Roughly 5 miles into the day, the trail goes right past this gem.

So much good food

We hung out with some other thru-hikers at the picnic tables and rocked some Italian Ice. This place had loads of food and it was a shame we only had done 5 miles out of town when we hit it. If we had hit that after a few days out of town, we’d still be there eating pizza, sandwiches, ice cream, pasta… Well, you get the picture.

Most of the hiking was pretty uneventful. The difficulty level was average, with some short and steep elevation changes, which seems pretty typical for New York.

Typical scenery in New York

We ended up in the state park around evening. I promptly got stung by a bee that was hanging out in some brush by the trail, so that was annoying.

We are supposed to camp here in some designated campground down by the lake, but we decided due to tiredness to just stealth camp in the woods off the trail behind a big rock formation. We had earlier plans of going down and using the campground showers and such, but that may not happen either due to tiredness. Also, one day of stank out of town isn’t too bad (I think).

Tomorrow we continue trekking through NY. I expect a fairly similar day, with some food near road crossings and probably pretty much the same terrain and sights. It is the AT though, so you never know.

Vital stats for Sunday, July 20th :
Milestone – 1400 miles down
Miles hiked today – 20.2
Mood – New York state of mind
Physical state – tired, but good
Smell – I took a theoretical shower, so, umm, still bad
Song stuck in my head – All of Life Is Peachy by Korn. There aren’t many metal bands from the 90’s that my 34 year old self will still admit to listening to (I finally threw away all my Limp Bizkit albums, weee!), but this album is still awesome IMO.

We got up pretty early because we were motivated to get to town to do laundry, take showers, and relax in town after 5 full days of hiking. We hiked out of Harriman and towards Bear Mountain State Park. We first had to climb Black Mountain, which had some nice views of the Hudson and a very cool but very faint view of the NYC skyline.

Hudson River Valley

We then descended and had to play frogger to cross the Palisades Parkway (road crossings are easily the most dangerous thing I’ve seen on the AT so far). We tried to remember the details of the Seinfeld Frogger episode, but didn’t have a Swatsky handy unfortunately.

Palisades Parkway

Then we climbed West Mountain, which was the hardest and steepest climb we had since sometime in central Virginia. That descended down and then we had our last climb of the day, up to Bear Mountain. It was like entering a different world, probably because it was a Saturday. Tourists and day hikers were everywhere. The terrain was well graded and pretty easy hiking. I’d imagine they were wondering wtf was up with the smelly backpackers. One nice older lady asked if we were thru-hikers and then gave us some fresh apples when we confirmed we are. She said her friend told her thru-hikers crave fresh fruit (true, along with fresh hot dogs) so she brought 3 apples along on her hike, which was super sweet of her.

Bear Mountain view

This descended down to Hessian Lake, which was teeming with people. It was quite a shock from the relative peace and quiet in the woods. This is probably the weirdest section of the trail we’ve seen. After going past the lake jammed full of people rocking boom boxes and picnicking, it went through the Bear Mountain zoo. We saw two bears, bringing the total count we’ve seen to 11. I’m not sure if these two really count though.

Zoo bears

I felt kinda bad for these guys considering how many we’ve seen out in the wild. At least they aren’t in danger of being shot by angry farmers in Virginia. Another interesting side note is that this is the lowest elevation on the trail at 124 feet.

We then went to the southwest side of the Bear Mountain Bridge and got a lift into Fort Montgomery from the owner of the Bear Mountain Bridge Motel. This motel is small, but nice and clean. It’s about 3 miles south of West Point. We got some good town food and relaxed for the afternoon. It’s been a nice nearo. It was tempting to stay for a full zero, but I think we will push on tomorrow while the weather is nice.

Vital stats for Saturday, July 19th :
Miles hiked today – 11.7
Mood – chill
Physical state – good
Smell – I think the tourists finally stopped staring and screaming finally
Song stuck in my head – Over & Over by Smallpools

Last night we heard a coyote for the first time. Early in the night, it sounded like it annihilated some other animal for dinner. It was crazy sounding. Then late in the night, it started yipping and howling. It was pretty eerie and cool.

Today was another fantastic day of weather for hiking. I decided to take videos of a lot of today to later make a “day in the life of a thru-hiker” video compilation that shows all the routine stuff we do throughout the day that is unique to thru-hikers. I think it’ll be cool, but I won’t get to post it until we’re done. It was good day to do this because it was action packed.

We started the morning with a hike by Fitzgerald Falls.

Fitzgerald Falls. The water was mostly not orangey yellow like the rest of the water in Jersey and New York

Then we climbed Buchanan and Arden Mountain, which were both very steep and full of rock scrambles. There are numerous swamps and bogs in the gaps between these mountains, too. The terrain is most definitely getting harder again. On the positive side, it’s also getting more interesting.

We ran into some good trail magic around lunch. One of the thru-hikers in this vicinity is a recent retiree named Mad Jack. His wife, Good Vibrations, is following his hike with a brand new Airstream. We chatted with them both for a bit today and Good Vibrations hooked us up with some sodas. Less than a mile later, we ran into a guy named Tent Man who works for campmor.com. He hooked us up with more soda, fruit (gotta eat something healthy once every month or two), candy, darn-tuff socks (usually $20 or so), Mountain House dinners, protein bars, denatured alcohol (for our cook stove), and numerous other goodies. This dude was awesome and was literally shoving this stuff on us. He also gave us some good tips on the area we are in and even some tips about camping up in Maine.

Crazy Trail magic

We then hiked into Harriman State Park. Wow, this place is cool. It’s like a hiker playground. It has everything. It’s got lakes, ponds, swamps, boulder scrambles, mountain climbs, views, grassy peaks, midgets on grassy peaks, etc.

Cool grassy meadow peak in Harriman

It certainly seems like it gets a lot of foot traffic, as some of the deer let me get really close, but it’s an awesome place. We also went through the very tight Lemon Squeezer. I have some amusing videos of us trying to fit through with our packs.

Lemon Squeezer rock formations

We later stealth camped in a nice flat spot a couple hundred yards from the trail somewhat near Seven Lakes Drive.

Tomorrow we are excited to head into Fort Montgomery after about a 12 mile hike. It’ll be excellent to take a nearo to get cleaned up and relax in town with a beer or two or three.

Vital stats for Friday, July 18th:
Milestone – less than 800 miles left to Katahdin
Miles hiked today – 18
Mood – excited for town
Physical state – good
Smell – dirty socks filled with mustard and anchovies
Song stuck in my head – Swing Set by Moving Mountains