Not one of my best days...

We were on the section named "Agony Grind"...that should tell you how our day went...

Before we went to bed last night, the weather was forecasted to be pretty miserable today. When we woke up, it turned out that the weatherman had gotten one right. The worst of the weather was supposed to come in the afternoon, so we got up very early. Even at 5:30am, the sky was grey and misty. We had originally planned on doing 12 miles today, but things looked so bad outside we shaved that down to 5. It was a good thing we did too, because the 5 miles we did do were tough enough.

5 miles of this...in the rain.

Climbing up, over, and down large, steep, slippery rocks is rather difficult. I'm not trying to justify my sloth-like pace of barely 1 mile per hour for the day. I was actually pretty proud of that pace. Going any faster would've been dangerous. One lesson I am relearning the hard was is that the terrain map in the guide book is occasionally deceptive. In my guide, this section looked nearly flat, or like gently rolling hills at best. Obviously that is not what we encountered. The pulled hamstring that was bothering me yesterday was worse today. I know that slowed me down a lot. But the last thing I need is to hurt it worse. I made it to the end just fine.

Resting on Rocks in the Rain

On the plus side, even though it took us nearly 5 hours to go 5 miles, we got finished with our shorter hike around noon. That gave us some time to do some planning, some laundry, and explore the nearby thriving metropolis of Warwick, NY, where I had some BBQ duck for supper. Even the "bad" days have silver linings.

Historic Warwick