Jul 1 - New York

DAY #105
START LOCATION: Near US-9/NY-403
FINISH LOCATION: RPH Shelter
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 19.4
TRIP MILEAGE: 1,418.5
MILES TO GO: 760.6

Smoke and I were up late shooting the breeze and catching up on life
until 11:00PM last night. Needless to say, we weren't spring chickens
this morning. We got up around 8:30, broke camp and headed 1/4 mi
south to the Appalachian Market at 9:30. We were there for an hour
gorging on breakfast and doping up on water.

Our 10:30AM departure left us some hard work to bang out the 19+ miles
we were looking for today. The trail was essentially the same all
day... Lots of rocky 100' ups and downs and twists and turns. It was
strenuous at times. But, I found it rather inspiring during one of
these nasty climbs this morning when Alicia Keys channelled Sinatra's
outlook on New York... "If you can make it here, you can make it
anywhere."

We hiked through most of Clarence Fahnestock State Park today. It's
not as impressive as Harriman is, IMHO, but it still had some nice
vistas. Another thing really cool about New York so far is all the
vintage stone walls that seem to endlessly ribbon in and out of the
wilderness. Smoke and I suspect they were all property boundaries at
some point. Some are just so intricately built and well crafted. Yet,
they go mostly unappreciated except for what you can see from the trail.

At 7:45PM, we pulled into Fahnestock State Park's Shenandoah Campsite
with the hope of staying there the night. It had a nicely mowed lawn,
picnic tables, a picnic canopy and a hand pump for potable water. All
it didn't have... A place for Smoke to hammock. So we cooked dinner,
loaded up on water, donned our headlamps and headed north to search
for a hammock and tent friendly campsite. We didn't find any on the
uneven ground and ended up hiking 1.5 miles to RPH Shelter, which
afforded our mutual portable sheltering needs. There's a few other
hikers here, but darkness didn't allow us to figure out who.

New York is wrapping up and we'll be in New England tomorrow or the
next day... Very exciting for me.

Errata... Today was the first time on this entire thru hike thus far,
that a low hanging tree branch knocked my hat off. The best part... It
happened to Smokestack about 2 hours later, also for the first time
ever.

-natedog