Ridin’ the Rails

After I got off the trail on July 6, I needed to make a plan to get back on trail somewhere I could get to fairly easily, without having to rely on shuttles or Ubers or things like that. So I looked at the number of days that I’d been off trail and tried to figure out where I sort of would have been had I not gotten off trail. Looking at the map, I saw that Port Jervis in New York is very close to the trail — it’s very close to High Point State Park in New Jersey. Port Jervis basically sits on the border of Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey.

So that seemed like a good spot to get trail access, and conveniently, I could take a train from New York City to Port Jervis, and it's easy to get a train from Charlottesville to New York City. So, I did some estimating with respect to where I think I would have otherwise been on the trail at this point, and it all seemed to line up well. I felt pretty good about where I'd be getting back on trail.

[Wife note: I just want to clarify that the reason he didn’t just retrace his steps and return to the spot on the trail that he’d left from is that one of his friends was going to be flying out from Idaho to join him soon, so Rob/Patch wanted to make sure he’d be able to make it to their meeting point in time.]

This morning (July 11), S. drove me to the Amtrak station, which is only a few miles from our house, and I caught the Northeast Regional train that goes from Lynchburg to New York City. Charlottesville was only the second stop, so I was able to get a very good seat, and my pack fit on the upper rack no problem. I’d been a little worried about that. That leg of the trip ended up not being very eventful.

The train was about 30 minutes late pulling into Penn Station, which wasn’t too bad. I wasn’t sure where I’d need to go when we arrived to get the next train to Secaucus Junction in New Jersey, but it happened to be literally the next track over. The signage was just awful, but thankfully, I knew the track number I needed, so that helped. Otherwise, I would have gone all the way up to the main station only to come right back down. And I probably wouldn’t have made it in time. Anyway, I rode that train for one stop, then switched to a different one and rode two hours to Port Jervis.

In the end, I made two transfers and never had to wait more than ten minutes, which was pretty impressive, I thought. And it was actually kind of fun. I boarded in Charlottesville, and three trains later, lo and behold, I was in Port Jervis. In the United States, at least, it's pretty uncommon to be able to go from Virginia to somewhat upstate New Jersey or New York without having to get in a car. So that was great. The train certainly worked out very well for me in this case, and I was glad to have that option.

I definitely feel a bit strange about missing those miles, but I know that they're sort of miserable hiking miles. Back in probably 1997 or 1998, I actually hiked that section of trail with some friends, maybe not the whole section, but definitely a good portion of the part of eastern Pennsylvania that I missed. So, at least I've done most of that section before. S. said she’s happy to make a special trip later this year and maybe slack pack me to make it up, if I feel I need to, but I think if I end up not going back to revisit it, it's not a terrible miss on my part. I guess we’ll see.

The hotel I’d booked was only about a ten-minute walk from the train station, and on the way, I stopped into a Walgreens to get some water. The Erie Hotel is very old school and reminds me a bit of the Doyle in Duncannon, Pennsylvania.

It’s got a bar and a restaurant on the first floor, and you check in at the bar like you do at the Doyle. But I’d say this is a little bit of a nicer establishment. Once I got into my room, I dropped my bag and immediately came back downstairs, sat at the bar, and ordered a Fiddlehead IPA, some shrimp cocktail, and a burger and fries.

There’s a woman here at the bar who is absolutely screeching at top volume into her phone, and even though the bartender asked her to keep it down, that doesn’t seem to have had any effect. For dessert, I think I’ll get myself a nice milk stout, but then I’ll head back to my room, since the atmosphere here is not exactly the most relaxing right now. But at least I’ll have had a nice big dinner before hitting the trail in the morning. It was a really nice trip back, and I feel good about my decision to get back on the AT here in Port Jervis.