Sunday, August 2 8:50 pm 14.9 mi
AT 1406.1 Zoo → AT 1421.0 Dennytown Road Campsite
Weather: Rainy, warm, humid, and sweaty afternoon/evening
Trail Conditions: After big climb this morning, terrain was quite gentle!
My Condition: I had a tough day. Felt weak all day, never really hit my stride
Crossed the Bear Mountain bridge over the Hudson River, right underneath a nested pair of peregrine falcons. Trail angel Jeff left $30 at the Appalachian Market deli and convenience store for Puddles, Blue, Hummingbird, and me to split. Incredible! I’m blown away by the kindness of total strangers – definitely restoring my faith in humanity. New Yorkers have been quite kind (Pennsylvanians were too!) - lots of curious day hikers and bikers asking about our journeys and wanting to follow along. Drank a quart of whole milk, a big can of raspberry iced tea, and a new flavor of Mountain Dew (raspberry lemonade – it wasn’t good) and ate a bag of Jax cheese curls and 2 slices of pizza. I’m worried about my vanishing appetite, however. I ate a pack of strawberry fig bars this morning, but didn’t touch my trail snacks. At times I’ll feel hungry, but generally I haven’t felt like eating. Puddles is experiencing the same thing. I remember Odyssa talking about this battle, and I’m wondering if my lethargy and fatigue/weaknesses is simply due to a calorie deficit. I need to eat like my hike depends on it! Beautiful, huge, open campsite tonight with a water spigot and port-a-potties, all to ourselves. Chorus of crickets started promptly at 8:31 pm.
Post Trail Analysis
I was packed and ready to hit the trail before the zoo had opened up for the day, so I took the blue blaze around it. I’m pretty sure Blue snuck in the back entrance, which she found open, and played the “dumb tourist” when the employees told her she couldn’t be there! Hummingbird waited until the zoo officially opened. While I have less than nice things to say about the water sources in New York, most of which tasted funny, the people of New York were some of the nicest I’d meet along the entire trail. I was blown away at the curiosity and kindness of strangers here. At this point in the journey, my hiker hunger was mysteriously going AWOL. I don’t know if there’s a correlation with the summer heat, but I just didn’t feel ravenously hungry like I should have. I really had to work each meal to put down the calories I knew I badly needed. This is another of my favorite campsites of the entire trail – large, round, flat, open, grassy meadows surrounded by trees, dotted by grills and picnic tables, complete with restroom facilities and a water spigot.
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