August 3

Lions and Bears, Oh my!  (no tigers, sorry)

I slept great last night.  Great that is, until about 5:30 this morning.  The sun wasn't quite up yet, only the first light of dawn started illuminating our campsite.  I woke up to some shuffling noises and Rainbow Eyes saying "is anyone else awake?".  I had my tarp up over my hammock, but with how my hammock was sagging underneath of it, I was able to just see out underneath the tarp, as a large black object ran by me.  Rainbow Eyes had been sleeping and heard shuffling outside of his tent.  He thought it was Slims, since he is usually up early.  When he rolled over an looked out of his tent door, he saw the face of a large bear staring through the mesh right back at him.  When he sat up and started talking, it scared the bear away.  When the bear ran past my hammock, it stopped about 20 feet away, at the trail.  I got out of my hammock.  I shined my headlamp on it, talked really loudly, and walked toward the bear, and it ran off into the woods.  So that was fun.  We all went back to sleep for a few more hours.  After we got to hiking, we had a fun climb through a large crack in a rock wall, similar to the Lemon Squeezer we had done back in NY.  The woods are starting to change a little bit, and I'm really liking what I see.  More and more evergreens.  Of course hemlocks, but now there's lots of white pines, and even some cedars.  We took a lunch break at a viewpoint at Belter's Bump.  We had some more flat, easy hiking in the afternoon, but heat had ratched up a few notches from yesterday.  Soaked in sweat, we stopped near Falls Village, CT, to wash off in the outdoor shower at the water treatment facility.  Just past town, the trail went by the impressive Great Falls for which the village gets its name.  After the falls, I really enjoyed the hike, through more beautiful hemlock forest.  I stopped to take a picture at Giant's Thumb, a large stone monolith that looks like, well, a thumb.  We all stopped to set up camp at a stream nearby, since water had been in short supply today.  The woods were really pretty, with the orange glow of the setting sun shining through the hemlocks and birch trees.  While we were eating dinner, Apache had a story to share with us.  He had gotten to camp a few minutes before everyone else.  Just before our campsite, there was a long, stone wall, a couple feet high.  On the wall, he had seen something out of the corner of his eye, and stopped to get a better look.  It was a large cat.  Now bobcats are known to exist all up and down the range of the Appalachian mountains.  They pretty much look like big house cats, with pointed ears, flat faces, and spotty coloring that helps it blend in with its surroundings.  This was no bobcat.  It was about 2 feet tall at the shoulders, and 4 feet long, with a long tail, rounded ears, and a long tail.  Mountain lions aren't supposed to exist out here.  According to various wildlife and forestry agencies, their habitat is exclusively in the western U.S. and parts of Canada, mostly in the Rocky Mountains.  They have been spotted as far east as Indiana, but to see one on the east coast is exceptionally rare.  With the bear in camp this morning, and a mountian lion in the area tonight, I sure didn't sleep very well.  Rainbow Eyes was really calm about the bear situation though.  He joked that bears are like vampires, they'll only come in if you invite them.  So as long as he didn't invite the bear into his tent, it would leave him alone.  Quite an eventful day.