Miles: 22.8
Steps: 50,539
Elevation Gain: 4,632 feet
Yet another amazing day. Beautiful hiking up Bear Mountain in the morning. Rewarded with vending machines and a whole ton of road bikers at the summit. The tower at the summit made Murph and I self conscious of our smell in the small enclosed area of the tower.
At the bottom of the mountain? TONS of people! And a Merry-Go-Round, snack bar, ice cream vending machines, and more. I had 2 hot dogs and I was happy.
Then there was a zoo on the trail! Zoos are weird. Sure, it’s neat to observe all sorts of different animals, but it’s also weird to enclose wild creatures just for our amusement. Thankfully, most of the animals at this zoo were rescued and would die in the wild. The bear was the most interesting. Why? Because when the worker came out to feed it from the other side of the fence she said “sit” and the bear just sat right down! She fed the bear by hand through the fence! I thought that was pretty unusual. Another cool thing? There were some mushrooms in the rattlesnake cage with a sign explaining that the potency of the poisonous mushrooms was far more potent than that of the rattlesnake. Also, did you know that some frogs will eat snakes, mice, and birds? This I did not know, and this was cool to learn!
If all that wasn’t enough, we got to walk across the beautiful Bear Mountain Bridge across the Hudson River, and also hit the lowest point on the entire trail: 124 feet above sea level! The lowest point of Walk the Parks so far, too!
More rewards came after some hard climbs: a deli! With inside seating, a place to charge electronics, and air conditioning! The bathroom was out of order which turned out to not be so good for me: I had to make a quick run out the exit and back to the trail once during my visit!
After all that we hiked a couple more miles and camped. Crazy super loud noises were coming from some Coyotes in the middle of the night. Coyotes? You crazy!
More excitement to come tomorrow, I’m sure!