Hiked 10.8 miles, staying at the Mohican Outdoor Center.
I slept in until the late hour of 7 am today! It was a good night to be indoors as there was quite the raging storm outside. Torrential downpour and tons of lightning would have made for an unpleasant night in my tent. I slept on the top bunk which was a bit scary, the "bunk" was really a shelf at most about 3 feet wide with no lip or rail to protect against rolling off.
I went downtown to the diner for breakfast along with Slim Jim. It was still raining pretty hard and with only ten miles to do today I took my time getting back on the trail. Slim Jim and I walked out of town together and crossed the Delaware River into New Jersey. The river was running fast and was full of silt from all of the recent rain. Seven states down, seven to go! From this point forward we get to knock off a bunch of states quickly. Except Maine, all remaining states are less than 160 miles, so we get to knock off almost a state per week now!
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| Crossing the Deleware River! |
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| Back in the woods again, hiking through Kittatiny State Park |
The majority of the day was spent slowly climbing Kittatiny Mountain. The trail started out near the Kittatiny Visitors Center as a wide gravel path. It is always interesting leaving town on these types of trails and to watch them get narrower and narrower and less well kept until you are finally back on a root and rock covered trail after a few miles. The trail today was covered in rushing water. Just like people, water takes the path of last resistance down a hill and the trail makes a perfect path for it. With all of the rain we have seen in the last couple of days the trail was ankle deep water most of the day. In some places it was moving fast enough that on slick rocks it threatened to knock you off your feet if you weren't careful. It's amazing how powerful moving water can be.
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| One of the less water covered parts of the trail today... |
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| Water rushing downhill on the trail |
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| Sunfish Pond |
I stopped for a long break about halfway up at Sunfish Pond. This pond is naturally extremely acidic, so much so that only two species of fish are hardy enough to survive in it. It is supposedly one of the seven natural wonders of New Jersey. Based on that I am suddenly finding New Jersey not that wonderous... It was a pretty spot and we haven't seen a body of water of this size in a long time so that was really nice.
Kittatiny Mountain was a nice view. We spend the first half of New Jersey paralleling the Delaware River, so I could see it sprawled beneath me from the mountaintop. It was fun to actually climb a named mountain again. We have been walking ridge lines for so long that I don't think I've been on the top of a named mountain since before the Shenandoahs.
We all didn't know what to do with ourselves stopping so early in the day. We lounged around the bunkhouse all afternoon once it was ready for us to move into. Normally they don't make dinner here but we got really lucky tonight. They hold conferences and training programs here and there was one going on. For a small fee they let thru hikers go to town on the leftovers and go to town we did. This was hands down the best dinner I've had on trail since Elmer's in Hot Springs. They served everything from Thai chicken to fruit soup and we even got some of the strawberry raspberry banana bread that they had for desert. The only requirement was that we sit off in the corner and speak only when spoken to.
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| Looking ahead down the trail from Kittatiny Mountain |
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| Huge copperhead sunning itself near Mohican Outdoor Center |
The conference was a training for an outdoors mentoring program. We ate in silence while they had announcements. Apparently they are going on a camping trip tomorrow for a whole night (gasp)! They were also going through a checklist of things to bring on the camping trip and we were sitting in the corner chuckling at the unnecessary stuff. Like you don't need mittens because you can just use socks. We realized how streamlined our gear list has gotten having been out here for three months. We would have been happy to talk to people about our hike and whatnot, but everyone very carefully ignored the smelly hobos in the corner. Just a reminder to you guys not to judge a book by its cover, we are really interesting people I swear.
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