Long NY Days

So many places to go, so little time. According to this sign, you can actually walk to NYC from here, down another trail (not the AT). Although I'm not sure I'd want to. I'm not sure how the locals would react to a smelly hiker wandering into Times Square with a pack full of spare socks and dehydrated food.

Today was a long day. We almost got run off from our overnight spot by a park ranger last night, and we got stopped by a policeman at 5:30 am this morning for driving in the lefthand lane. I know everyone is trying to do their jobs, but we were almost treated like petty criminals. I know that we have Kentucky plates and that Amicus has a ponytail, but really, surely these New Yorkers have seen stranger things? They acted liked coming here to hike the AT was very suspicious, even though the most famous trail in the country runs straight through their hometown. Anyway, no one was hurt and I actually am glad that the officers actually patrol the rural areas, which would otherwise probably be a pretty easy place for people who were up to no good to hide. Well done, New York law enforcement. Your backroads are safe from rednecks for another day. We hiked over 13 miles today, but only about 11 of those were on the AT. We had to park a significant distance from the actual trail. It was just the nature of the trail in this area. There were simply no good access points. So we walked two extra miles. It sprinkled a bit this morning, but nothing significant weather-wise, which was nice. The terrain was pretty varied. Flat in some parts, very steep in others. We even went through a section called the "Lemon Squeezer."

Entering the Lemon Squeezer

We've decided that the Trail in New York has a bit of a Napoleon complex. All of the hills we've encountered on the Trail in New York haven't been very high, never going about 1400 feet in elevation, but the climb to the tops of them is always straight up, over huge rocks. They are short climbs, but grueling because of how steep they are. It's almost as if New York is daring you to make fun of it for being the state with the lowest hills on the AT. I have a hard enough time climbing up those small hills, and I know how it feels to be the short one in school, so I'm reserving judgement. Merely observing. We finally made it up and over all those Napoleonic hills and to our destination for the day, even though it took us longer than we wanted (until almost 5:00pm) because of the extra mileage we added on to get to the parking lot. We were pretty tired, so we got ourselves some meat and vegetables at the nearby Outback Steakhouse and called it a day. A very, very long day.

First view of the Hudson River