Rest, Relax, Restart

Tonight, July 21st, I’m camping with my friend Jon at the Ten Mile campsite along the Housatonic River in Connecticut. Jon was basically the first friend I made when I went to college, and we remain very close to this day. He flew out from Idaho to hike with me a few days ago. So for this post, I'll kind of review the past couple of days.

On the 19th, I woke up at the campsite at Canopus Lake, and Jon had taken the red-eye flight from Boise to the East Coast. But as you might remember, the 19th was when the airlines and a number of other industries faced a giant software disruption. So you can probably imagine what happened. Jon's flight was one that was affected by the global IT problems. He was supposed to arrive in the morning, but instead, he was stuck in Atlanta for a while and didn’t actually get here until the afternoon.

Fortunately, I was at that lovely shelter by the lake, so I just hung out and made some plans for the next few days. I checked out the map and saw that there was an Eastern Mountain sports not far from the park that we could stop by. I wanted to get myself some “Happy Feet” insoles and maybe some sort of foot lube. Thankfully, the weather was nice — the humidity had broken — but nonetheless, I was super happy to not to be out hiking. My whole body was hurting.

I coordinated with S. to find a decently priced hotel in Fishkill for two nights, which turned out to be the Quality Inn. Jon and I had originally planned to get on the trail on the 20th, but given his delayed arrival and the fact that my feet were still really chewed up, we decided to postpone to the 21st. Jon was going to be renting a car, and our plan was to park it at a point further down the trail and then have a shuttle take us to our starting point and hike back, so I also needed to look into finding someone to help us with that.

Jon picked me up from the lake at mid-afternoon on the 19th, and we headed straight to the Sloop Brewing Company for refreshments. As soon as we could, we checked into our hotel, and I got cleaned up.

We went to Industrial Arts in Beacon, NY, for a few more beers [Wife note: So jealous!], and then picked up some dinner from the diner next to the Quality Inn. They gave me a massive amount of food. I couldn’t even finish it.  

The morning of the 20th, we went back to the diner for breakfast, and I ordered an omelet with avocado and Swiss plus a pancake and fruit, which was great. There was a laundromat just a little over a mile away, and that was our next stop. We hit Walmart for some resupply and then the outdoor store to track down some fuel and all that fun stuff.

Then we found a great Belgian place called the Dutchess Biercafe. There seems to be a bit of a theme developing. I think my last zero on trail was in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and I was able to find a Belgian place there. This time, I was zeroing in New York — and found another great Belgian place. I'm really liking this trend, given that I absolutely love Belgian beers. I started with a Kwak, which is one of S.’s favorites, and followed it up with a Van Steenberge de Garre Tripel. Jon had a Chouffe, which is another favorite in our house. [Wife note: So much so that we named one of our cats after it!]

Jon and I woke up on the 21st and had arranged for a shuttle driver to meet us at a spot in Connecticut, about an hour away. Our driver turned out to be an older lady who’d just lost her cat six days earlier. Apparently, she’d gone down to the monastery where hikers camp to just hang out with and talk to the hikers there for a while, and for some reason, she’d brought her cat with her, and it ran away. So she was pretty torn up about the whole thing, which made the long car ride a bit uncomfortable.

Anyway, she brought us back just a few miles short of where I’d gotten off at Canopus Lake. I’d been keeping an eye on Far Out and had seen a bunch of comments about how the water sources in that area were largely dry and unreliable. The weather was promising to be pretty brutal, and I didn’t want to risk our running low on water and having to struggle to find it. I guess I might be a bit overcautious now after getting so dehydrated and sick back in Virginia, but I decided it was in our best interests to skip that bit like they were recommending on Far out, just to be safe.

So we started hiking, and the trail was good. We didn't see many thru-hikers along the way, but we did run across some Trail Magic. We actually crossed paths with the people who’d provided it. They were out day hiking and let us know that we’d find a cooler waiting for us down the trail a bit, which was just great. I drained a nice cold Dr. Pepper, which really hit the spot.

Shortly after that, we ran into a section hiker named Toast, who was a really nice guy. He started section hiking the Appalachian Trail in 1974. He was heading south, so he was able to give us the lay of the land and some good intel about the upcoming campground and water sources and all that.

We pulled into the Ten Mile River Shelter campsite at about 4 o'clock. We’d started in the day in New York and finished the day in Connecticut, so that’s another state line crossed.

While we were setting up our stuff, who should come into camp but Sings with the Pines? That seemed amazing to me. I met him for the first time in Virginia at about mile marker 675, and here we are now at mile marker 1,460, crossing paths again. Kind of wild. I’m hoping we'll see some more hikers up the trail a little bit. It was a great first day hiking with Jon, and we'll see what tomorrow brings.