Upward and Onward

Hello friends and family!

After another somewhat longish pause in the updates (It must have been unbearable, I know because I have gotten multiple people asking me, "when are you going to update your blog?"  Understand that this is a trail, and we are roughing it with only semi regular access to wifi and even less regular access to computers.  I know it's hard to imagine, but I only have certain windows of time here and there to do this...)

We had left Crispy's house hit the trail (due to a miscommunication, we were 15 miles north of everyone else). Doing the math, we only had o average 15.5 miles/day to get to Katahdin by September 30, though we tell ourselves 16 because it makes the math easier.  That means if you pop a couple 20+ days here and there, we can take more neros and zeros.  This revelations was invigorating.  We did 20 right out of the gates and camped in New Jersey.  PA is behind us (thank goodness), and another state bites the dust.

The next couple days were beautiful.  We hiked along ridges that were very similar to the Roan Mountains along the TN-NC border, which is one of our favorite sections.  The weather played nice. It would comfortably chilly in the mornings and pleasantly warm in the afternoons.  We had clear skies, gentle breezes, and starlit nights.  The terrain was not any extra difficult, so we just breezed through NJ.

The most memorable part of NJ is I found Excalibur.  Quick backstory: I started the trail with two trekking poles.  They lasted all the way up until we hit PA's rocks.  The day I fell, one of my poles bent so much that it looked this: L.  When I attempted to straighten it, it snapped.  I did the next section with only one pole.  But, as we hiked along the shore of Sunfish Pond, a glacier lake in the mountains, I saw a lovely specimen of wood in the water.  I pulled out this stick, cut it to length, and dubbed it "Excalibur" after King Arthur's sword given to him by the Lady of the Lake (pet peeve warning: the Excalibur is not the sword he pulled from the stone, that sword was unnamed and broke in an early combat with the Black Knight, the Sword in the Stone is Uther Pendragon's--Aurther's true father--sword).  I started the trail resolved not to naming my gear, my resolve not to name my gear dubbed my other trekking pole, "The Pole Who Must Not be Named," "Voldy" for short (a Harry Potter joke).

We also enjoyed the product of Jersy cows at a lovely evening at a creamery just 300 yards from the trail.  I have no idea if the cows are technically Jersey Cows, but we were in NJ, and the shop said their milk was from local cows, which means the cows are in NJ and thus Jersey Cows.  Whiles at the shop, we scored some hardcore trail magic.  This guy had a whole trash bag full of  goodies.  I landed a 2 1/2 lbs of mini Snickers/Twix/3 Musketeers/Milkyways.  I refrained from consuming all of them in under 24 hours.

As far as states as a whole go, NJ ranks first.

Then we hit New York.  The border was on this ridge and we come around the corner to behold this flag mounted in the rocks with the lake valley spread out beneath us.  After that, the next two days were awful.  The heat returned, and with it the climbs.  No more gently rolling ridges, now it was more like hiking massive crenellations.  But all was redeemed when we got to Black Mountain.  we were less than 40 miles from New York City, and Black Mtn. was a popular spot to camp since you could see the city's skyline.  We spent an enjoyable nigh watching a beautiful sunset, a blood moon rise, and NYC's lights shine with a half-dozen SOBO thruhikers (Ever since we hit NJ, we have been hiking through the SOBO bubble).

We pushed on for Kent, CT, arriving early evening.  With another state finished, we celebrated with pizza (a whole pizza apiece) and then stealth-camped on the outskirts of town.  We have resupplied, eaten, rested, and now we are preparing to push on.  Ever onward, ever upwards, to Katahdin or bust.

 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
-Phil 3:14  



Bonus: if you are ever bored, you can go through and count to see how many times I use parentheses in this post (but if you at that bored, you really should get a life).