700 miles!!!

Today I hit a milestone! I have now hiked over 700 miles.  700.9 to be exact.  Well, as exact as you can be on a footpath of this sort...  Yay!

From New York State Thruway to West Mombasha Road
Miles 5.1

Well, today is the last day of hiking for now, before I (and Chip) have to return to our 'regular' lives for a short time.  We slept in, kind of.  Then, because it is Saturday, Sherwood was able to take time to hike along with me.  I felt it was fitting because I was ready to hike up Arden Mountain, and his middle name is Arden!  He had not been to this part of trail before, so off we went while Chip drove to the south end and started hiking toward us.  I was impressed that Sherwood, who is my uncle, (and is even older than my dad!) was willing to just jump onto the trail where I was today.  Which turned out to be an incredibly difficult climb.  I mean, really a hard boulder scramble for the first part of the morning.  We climbed together to the top where we took a break, then Sherwood hiked back to his car while I kept going South to meet Chip. 

By the time I met Chip there was only an hour of sunlight left, I was starting to get blisters from my new boots and it was very very cold. Chip had hiked four miles from the car.  We told each other about how few blazes we had seen all day and the difficulty we had in following the trail in broad daylight.  We commiserated about getting lost and wandering in the woods.  We decided with only an hour left of sunlight and three hours left of hiking it would not be safe to continue on towards the car, knowing we would be forced to night hike.  So when we came to a road three miles before the place where the car was parked we hitch-hiked back to the car instead of finishing the last three miles as planned.  It was a disspointing way to end the week; to hitch-hike instead of trail hike. 

I had originally hoped to finish hiking through New York state this week, but because of losing a day of hiking to the car breaking down on the way here, I feel good about the 49.7 miles of trail that we covered in five days.  I still have exactly 13 miles left in New York, and about 1,470 after that.  I will come back again in the spring, you can count on that!

Sherwood and I climbed up to the "Viewpoint Via Agony Grind  .2"

I saw a snake today.  It stayed perfectly still while I conducted a glamour shots session with it.

    Sherwood talking on the phone to his girlfriend while we take a break.  Below this picture are some shots of moss that I found to be beautiful.

Views from the Trail.