AT day 68 – New Jersey!
July 15th 2018
Delaware Water Gap – Brink Road Shelter (mile 1319.5)
24.9 miles
Total miles: 1338.5
It was a rough night. It rained a lot and I didn’t get to sleep until late because I was writing and watching the lightening and getting disturbed by the snoring.
Regret not having a shower. Really sticky. And no laundry for 11 days now.
I woke at 6 and I could hear the others packing up. I waited until 6:30am and got all my stuff together, grabbed some water and shovelled down a cliff bar and I was ready to go. So the 5 of us, who seem to be hiking as a group now, Peaches, Bryce, Shred, Jukebox and I all left together and hiked over the Delaware River where we crossed the state line into New Jersey. The 8th state!
The weather wasn’t looking great. The sky was black and the thunder was rumbling a lot. As we walked down a road lightening filled the sky. Uh-oh. After a short road walk we are back on the trail and going uphill. Uphill will always be a struggle for me, but it will especially be a struggle when I’m coming out of a town and it’s the first job of the day.
Shred and Jukebox went off ahead so quickly! Are they sure they want to hike with us?! They seem like way quicker hikers. I was of course at the back. I hate having people behind me on the uphill because there is too much pressure. I like doing my own pace.
It wasn’t particularly steep but it felt we were going uphill for a long time. I listened to the last bit of my audiobook and just carried on walking. I would get there eventually. The trail was rocky. Of course it was rocky. Do people think there is a hard border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey?? Some people think the rocks do magically disappear once they leave PA, but these people are going to be disappointed.
Jukebox slipped and fell and I laughed. Adults falling over is funny. As long as they don’t hurt themselves obviously. But I got my payback later on when I too slipped and fell on a wet rock.
By the time I had caught up to the others at a road crossing we had done 10 miles already. Although it was rocky I was keeping a 2.5 mph pace which I was pleased with. Not too far away was a fire lookout tower. We climbed it, I’m not sure we were supposed to but Bryce and Jukebox were already at the top when we got there. It was windy up there but it was no where near as leg wobbling as the one all the way back in Georgia.
We carried on and uphill again I lost them for a while. Then I caught up to Peaches who was having some foot issues. I hiked on and I waked with Shred and chatted to him for a bit. It was nice to talk to someone new.
Passed some kids doing outward bound.
We passed a turning to Crater lake and decided because it was half a mile off trail it was too far to take a side trip so we carried on. We started to get really tired and we turned our phones on and we had messages about going to the lake. There was a bit of confusion, we thought they were ahead of us, now we thought they were at the lake, then they came up the trail behind us! We had thought about talking a rest and we ended up all taking a break together in the middle of the trail. An older man joined us.
We managed to eek that break out to an hour. Just 4.3 miles to the shelter. I ate some mango and it was sweeter than anything from a supermarket
(reading this back while editing it I have absolutely no idea what I meant by this, by this point I was too tired and was just writing in bullet points!).
The trail did some little up and downs and the sky was now clear blue and it was hot. The couple of areas above tree line were nice but too hot. We all ran out of water.
Got there. Got water. So thirsty. Pitched tents all very close.
So many mosquitos. Had to leap on my tent. Noisy mosquitos...can’t keep my eyes open!