July 24

The party's over

We woke up to a beautiful sunrise this morning.  Across the street there was a good bagel place the guys at the fire station had told us about.  Taylor ham, egg, and cheese on an everything bagel.  When you're in Jersey, you have to get a bagel, and the Taylor ham sandwiches are the best.  That's what the firemen told us, and boy, were they right.  The post office was right there too.  My pack was feeling really heavy with all the food I was carrying.  I had to make a tough decision, but I decided to mail the disco ball home.  I had carried it over 400 miles, and it just wasn't getting enough use.  I'm holding on to my speakers though, so if we pick up more glow sticks in towns, we can still have a good party.  We didn't start back to hiking until noon.  As it always goes leaving town, we had a climb right away.  In the late afternoon, we got up onto a long ridgeline.  The trail went on for miles just climbing up and down massive rock formations.  Sometimes you would have to climb up some craggy parts and hop over and around boulders.  Other sections were just hiking on top of long stretches of flat rock.  We were walking right down the rocky exposed spine of the mountain.  We came across a marker painted on a rock.  "NY/NJ".  Another state down.  New York greeted us with more huge rocks.  At one point the trail ended at a rock wall, continuing further, about 20 feet up.  There was a ladder that helped you get up half way, but then you just had to toss the trekking poles up to the top and pull yourself up and over.  The rocky walk along the ridge continued for the rest of the evening, until we came down off the mountain to a road crossing.  We got a ride into Greenwood Lake, NY, which was a really pretty little town.  I had an excellent chimichanga at Mango's, a Latin restaurant in town.  We heard from a former thru-hiker that we could camp at a baseball field in town.  Getting to the park after dark, a police officer stopped us to ask what we were doing.  I don't think you're 'supposed' to camp there, but he didn't give us a hard time since we weren't up to any trouble.  New Jersey was awesome, and so far the transition into New York has been just as beautiful.  Crossing into a new state.  4 months on the trail!

Welcome to NY!