Miles: 20
Steps: 44,258
Elevation Gain: 4,601 feet
Another great day! Who’s surprised? Life out on the trail is full of hardship: it’s hot, water can be disgusting, smells your body and clothes emit can be more disgusting, you eat crap, mosquitos and bugs can be super annoying. But I love it! LOVE IT!!! The challenge each day brings is complimented by the reward of a mountaintop, the rain makes the next sunshine that much warmer. The 90 degree heat makes you thankful for fans and air conditioning.
Today was gorgeous, too. That helps. New York has been really beautiful. Harriman State Park in particular was really pretty.
The “lemon squeeze” was today. I had to take my enormous pack off and squeeze on through, struggling. Pretty humorous. I enjoyed the rock scrambles through the day though, good times. Kind of tricky to follow the trail today: not many blazes and the trail itself wasn’t obvious. Pretty rare out here on the AT, especially in comparison to the northernmost section of NJ, where we joked that there were blazes on almost every tree. Oh well, good times.
Beautiful camping area this evening. Sure, there was a copperhead snake close to camp, but who’s noticing these small details?