June 21 - 18.7 / 1,354.6

Today is the summer solstice. Do you know what that means? You are incorrect if you said the beginning of summer. The solstice stands for hike naked day. That is no lie. I'll wait until the end of the blog to let you know if I participated.

I didn't sleep too good while at The Outhouse. That is a common thing when I stay in a hostel or shelter. However, this time the reason was because of the pillow. We were given pillows to sleep with. Not knowing how clean mine was, I put it under my sleeping bag. It wasn't comfortable at all to do that. I found out in the morning that some clean pillow cases had been provided for us to use. I guess I missed that memo.

We woke up to Bill yelling at us from the top of the stairs. Breakfast was ready. It was cheese omelets, home fries, and english muffins. When I walked upstairs, Bill was throwing the omelets in the air and catching them in the pan, pretty impressive. After breakfast, I went back downstairs to pack my stuff and noticed I had a message from my friend Harrison. He had moved from Atlanta to NY about 1 to 2 years ago. I knew he lived close to the trail. I ended up calling him and working it out for him to pick us up at a road crossing 2 miles passed where we had planned to stop for the day. After working all that out, it was almost 10. That is a late start. T and T and myself headed off. Fusion was behind as he stopped by the post office to mail stuff home.

The morning hike was a cruise. Most of the morning was either along roads or a wildlife refuge area. At one point we walk almost 2 miles around some marsh and ponds. It gave us a good view of some water birds. After this, we climbed Pochuck Mountain. We decided to take a break at the trail leading to the shelter. Two trail maintainers walked to the trail and just told us that they had finished building a new privy. They said we could have the honors. Too bad I didn't have to use the restroom at the time.

Hiking on, I crossed over Pochuck and came down to the road leading to Glenwood, NJ. After the road, I began my walk along the longest boardwalk on the trail. I believe the boardwalk has over 8,000 planks. It took us a good 20 minutes or longer to walk the whole thing. I ate lunch with T and T. The three of us expected to have Fusion catch up. However, he never did.

I made my way up Wawayanda Mountain after lunch. It was a good little climb up some rocks. I passed by a group of elementary girls. One asked there leader why someone would walk all the way from Georgia. It didn't sound like the teacher could give an answer as I think she was just as perplexed. At the top, I passed Boston. It was weird. We had just finished talking about seeing and hearing trees fall during the last few months of our hike. It wasn't 30 seconds later that we heard on fall. I think it was due to a bear climbing in it, but I couldn't see it fall. I got ahead of him and stopped at a creek to cool off. He caught us and said he just saw a mom and cub. Ah, I missed it somehow.

I continued on to the shelter in which we all planned to meet at before hiking on to the road crossing. I came across some trail magic, but all the water jugs were empty. No biggies since I didn't need any water.

I got to the shelter around 5:40. Our goal was to be there by 6. Turkey and Thrasher rolled up a few minutes later. However, still no sign of Fusion. I knew we had to leave the shelter by 6:20 in order to meet Harrison 2 miles later by 7. Finally, Fusion showed up with 5 minutes to spare. He got a quick rest, and the four of us headed to the road. We got there right at 7. Harrison was not there yet so we dropped our packs and rested. That is when I noticed a good size bear, probably 400+ pounds, walking across the street. I casually said "bear." Then it hit me, and I yelled "BEAR!" All four of us immediately went for our cameras. I bear stopped in the middle of the road, looked at us, and moved on. Fusion was the only one to get to his camera in time. Oh well. Afterwards, we joked about how I casually said "bear" and then realized what was happening.

Harrison arrived and the four of us got in. He actually lives a few minutes away near Warwick, NY. We went back to his place, ate dinner, had a few beverages, and ate some more ice cream. The great thing about the trail is that I can easily eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's, enjoy it, and still don't fill full. I am going to balloon up when I am done hiking and try the same thing. We sat around for a bit and talked to one of his roommates. He lives with three other guys. They all have families. They commute to this house for work each week and then go home on the weekends. Sounds a little like the consulting world I am used to, but they are in construction. And it is a house and not a hotel.

Exhausted, we hit the sack to be ready to leave by 6:15 the next morning.

One of you skipped to the bottom without reading just to see if I hiked with no clothes on. I ended up not doing it. It was probably a smart thing caused I passed quite a few people out hiking. Plus, I might have gotten a little sunburned while hiking on the roads, in the wildlife refuge, or across the boardwalk.