August 2

Floatin'

We made a pretty early exit out of town, headed back to the trail.  Even though I kind of felt like I punked out by staying in town yesterday, it was a good call.  The weather today was great.  Sunny and cool.  We made pretty good time, and stopped for lunch after about 8 miles, near Stony Brook.  The hike leading up to this area was really flat, as the trail followed along side of the Housatonic.  The river was wide, and much calmer in this area of Connnecticut.  Massive hemlocks lined the river, and provided soft, cushiony soil that was a pleasure to walk on.  We took a really long lunch break.  Tink and Rainbow Eyes napped and did some reading.  Apache, Slims, and I wanted to go for a swim.  We saw some small rapids up ahead, so we walked a down the trail a bit, and then walked out into the river.  The water felt great.  It was flowing faster than it appeared to from the shore.  We had a blast floating in the waist deep water, through the white water.  In some places we would hold on to rocks that were sticking up out of the river, and just try to hang on, as the water rushed over us.  Apache lost a flip flop, so we hurried down the next section of the river as fast as we could to try to retreive it.  Past the rapids, the water was calm, and much deeper, so we swam ahead.  He got his footwear back, and we made our way back up to the shore.  After our break, we had more easy hiking for the rest of the afternoon.  The trail stayed flat for a while, continuing along the river, until it eventually climbed back into the mountians.  We had a few short ups and downs, then took a 0.1 mile side trail to a view at Breadloaf Mountain.  We continued on to Caesar Brook campsite with plenty of daylight left to set up camp for the night.  We knocked out 14 miles today.  Not bad considering we stopped for a 3 hour lunch break.