July 23

Vernon

Wow, I slept in really late this morning.  Slims and Apache were already packed up.  Tink and Rainbow had already hiked 5 miles this morning and were here at the Murray property with us.  I got a shower, ate breakfast, and started rolling.  It's warm and sunny.  We were all planning to stop in the next town, Unionville, NY, to do a resupply.  They all got out ahead of me, and I ended up hiking past the road that they took into town across the state line.  I ended up going to NJ 284, and having to backtrack down the highway about a mile or so to get into town.  I resupplied at the general store there.  They had a good selection of hiker food, but it was really expensive.  $2 for pasta sides, $2 packets of tuna, that kind of thing.  I got an awesome chicken salad sub from their deli for lunch.  The rest of the crew was just next door at the pizza place.  I saw Tink walking down the road looking distraught.  She was upset because she was beginning to think that she needed to start churning out big miles in order to finish her hike.  She wanted to finish in the first part of September, and she thought that would mean she'd be hiking past us, and she'd start having to start thinking about her hike as miles, miles, miles.  I told her she should call home and talk things out, and what ever happened, "one in four!".  That's the mantra.  Only about one out of four thru-hiker are successful in finishing their thru-hike.  She had said that to me before when I was having a bad day as a reminder to keep pushing to make sure I was one of the "one in four" to make it.  After lunch, the guys headed back out to the trail where they had come in to town, and I headed back down the road to where I needed to get back on the trail.  The sky was starting to get a little grey.  I hope it doesn't rain.  There was a series of road walks that came up next, then the trail dipped into the Wallkill River nature preserve area.  This was a really pretty, swampy area.  I saw a bird that from a distance looked like a heron.  There was also a turtle right in the trail that I had to be careful not to step on as I walked by.  Then the trail started climbing up Pochuck Mountain.  Just at the junction where a side trail went to the shelter there, Tink was sitting there waiting on us.  She was in much better spirits now after calling home and figuring some things out so that she didn't need to have such a tight deadline to finish her hike.  It was an all smiles, I'm sooo happy to see you guys, kind of moment.  We all walked together the rest of the afternoon up and down some more rolling mountains.  We eventually came to a really nice boardwalk that went through a huge swamp.  The sun was setting over the mountains.  The boardwalk meandered for almost a mile through the swamp.  Cattails and grasses all around.  Birds singing.  Insects chirping.  The blue-pink sky soon started to turn dark.  Thunder started rumbling in the distance.  It was beautiful.  We made it to a road crossing at NJ 94 and the rain started coming down in buckets.  It was just before dark, and two cars pulled over for us.  The super-rare double-hitch.  Tough to pull off with a group of five.  We went into the town of Vernon, NJ.  The fire station there will let hikers tent in their yard.  The firemen there were really nice, and happy to have us.  They said they used to get a lot more hikers, but ever since the church in town opened up a hostel, most of the hikers go there.  The wind was really starting to kick up, and the rain kept pouring down.  Everyone else did fine setting up their tents, but Apache and I had trouble with our hammock options.  He was able to string his up between a tree and a telephone pole.  I used my trekking poles to set up my rain fly like an A-frame tent.  First time doing that, but it was a success.  We went to a Chinese place for dinner, then Burger King for ice cream.  I got a cardboard box from them, which I broke down at camp and used as a ground cloth under my tarp.  Sleeping on a cardboard box.  Good, now I can check that off on the hobo list.  Haha.  Hey, it kept my sleeping pad from getting wet.

Camping at the Vernon fire station