Beach, Please

Today is Thursday, July 18, and I’m just chilling at the beach. Actually, I’m at a campsite on Canopus Lake in the Hudson Valley, which basically looks like a cute little beachfront. A lot of AT hikers tend to stay here or at least stop for a while to swim and get some food from the snack bar. It’s part of Clarence Fahnestock State Park, so it gets a lot of local visitors and tourists, too.

I spent last night on the ball field at the Grandmoor Spiritual Center, and it was a very rainy night. When I got up, everything was just soaking wet. People had hung things up in the pavilion area in hopes that they might dry out a little during the night, but unfortunately, the air had been so wet that nothing dried. The humidity was easily 100% all night.

It was actually a good place to camp, though. It had water, which is always appreciated, and I was there with a lot of really nice hikers. We all endured the storm together, which tends to take a bit of sting out of the experience, you know? I ended up leaving camp a little bit on the late side, because I attempted to dry a few things out first. The sun had come out, so I was hopeful, but the humidity was still 94%, so no luck.

I headed out of the ball field at about 8 o'clock, and I had planned to quote-unquote only hike 15 miles today to get to Canopus Lake, because I knew there was a lovely shelter here. And flush toilets. As I mentioned, it's a state park, so lots of people come here to go to the beach on the lake. It's a really lovely setting. The shelter is set back from the beach quite a bit, but that's okay. It's not a very long walk. But anyway, back to the hiking.

Because it was quite warm and humid out, the hiking was pretty slow. And on top of that, the trail was very, very rocky. It didn't take long for my feet to start suffering the effects of wet shoes and wet socks on rocky terrain. Plus, I hiked about 20 miles yesterday, and the final 5 were in the rain. And of course, my feet were really sweaty.

So I've basically been hiking with wet feet for a long time now. And my feet aren't appreciating that very much. As S. will tell you, my feet are normally baby soft, so any time they encounter even a modest level of hardship, they tend to surrender pretty quickly.

On the plus side, while was hiking, I came to a section of trail that had just a ton of blueberries, so I stopped there for a while to munch my way through a bunch of them. They were nice and ripe and delicious. That's a nice benefit of hiking the trail — sometimes you come across some nice fresh fruit, and you can just help yourself.

About 5 or so miles into the day, my feet were really hurting me. I was having a hard time just walking. I made it to a campsite on Dennytown Road — not a very nice one — and was considering just staying there, but I'm meeting my friend Jon on Friday, and we’d arranged to meet at Canopus Lake, so I wanted to get there sooner rather than later.

So I had to decide whether I was going to push on and hike another 5 miles or whether I was going to find some alternate form of transportation to get me here. I kept waffling back and forth, and since I was already stopped, I texted with S. a bit about it. She encouraged me to find some kind of ride to the lake to try to preserve my feet as much as possible. I mean, that’s important anyway, but she reminded me that Jon was flying out from Idaho to hike with me, so I didn’t want to go and ruin my feet just before he got here and scuttle our plans, especially for what she called a “measly five miles.” So that pretty much convinced me.

But finding alternate transportation turned out to be a lot more difficult than I’d expected. I tried contacting a few shuttle drivers that were listed on Far Out, but they were all either busy or just didn’t respond. So I tried Uber, but it was egregiously expensive — like, $53. On principle, I just couldn't bring myself to do that.

While I was working through my options, another thru-hiker named Moniker arrived at the campsite. I think Moniker has a great trail name. Apparently, early on in his hike, he assigned a lot of people their trail names, and in return, someone named him Moniker because of his superior naming abilities. Moniker lives in Berlin, but he's originally from Michigan. I’d stayed at the Lost and Found Hostel with him back in Greenwood Lake, and we’d talked about Germany a bit, which was fun.

Anyway, Moniker very generously offered to split the Uber with me, because he could see that my feet were not doing well, but I declined, so he headed back down the trail. Before he left, though, he made me feel a little better, because he said, “You wouldn't be the first person who yellow blazed a little portion of the trail.”

Now and again, hikers might need to get to a spot further down the trail quickly for some reason or they can't hike a portion of it because of an injury — like me with my hamburger feet today. So they'll do what’s called Yellow Blazing, which means traveling by car for a short portion of the trip. I mean, I feel a little bit weird about it, but my feet definitely don't.

I tried Uber again, but this time, I picked a slightly different destination. I’d originally put in the name of the lake, but this time, I just put the name of the park that the lake is in, and the price that came up was only half of what it had been originally. So I immediately booked it.

I had to walk a short ways from the entrance of the park to the lake, but it was a nice paved route, so that was totally worth it. I got here at about 4:15, and the snack bar closed at 4:30, so I didn't have time to get a full meal, but I did have time to get some ice cream and a soda, which was very enjoyable. After that, I made my way over to the campsite area. A southbound hiker named Chef was already there, and we chatted for a little while, and before long, Moniker showed up.

The three of us kind of have the place to ourselves tonight. This is a very nice campsite, and I can’t tell you what a big relief it was to not have to hike those final 5 miles. I don’t know how much worse my feet would be if I had, but thankfully, I didn’t have to find out. I'm going to take a zero here tomorrow while I wait for Jon to get here, which I will hope be enough time for my feet to dry out completely and be in better shape when we hit the trail together.

Oh, and I just realized that today marks four months that I’ve been on trail. I’ve still got quite a ways to go, of course, but that’s kind of crazy to think about.