Tuesday, 7\/7<\/p>\n
AT Miles = 15.3 \/ 1398.9
Other Miles = 0.4 \/ 48.4
Total Miles = 15.7 \/ 1447.3<\/p>\n
Whew! An eventful day!<\/p>\n
Early this morning I had to cross the Palisades Parkway during morning rush hour. This was like a game of live-action Frogger, only without the reset button. At the time I thought that was going to be the highlight — or lowlight — of the day.<\/p>\n
A few hours later I made it to the summit of Bear Mountain. A motorcyclist asked me if I had hiked all the way from the bottom. I said "I hiked all the way from Georgia." This lead to a conversation which I really enjoyed. He is a just retired cop from New Jersey and we talked about his many cross-country motorcycle trips and his plans to ride to Alaska. We also talked about hiking and bicycle touring. When it came time to leave he told me he was also a pastor — which I had figured since he had a well-thumbed bible sitting next to him as we talked — and he asked if he could pray for me, which I happily agreed to. Many of you know I am not at all religious, but it always touches me when people who believe in God's power are moved to try to share that power with me.<\/p>\n
After leaving the summit of Bear Mountain I made my way down to the bottom where the AT goes through the Bear Mountain Zoo. This is a sad little zoo with desultory animals stuck in tiny little cages. I took no pictures as it was nothing to celebrate.<\/p>\n
After the zoo, I crossed the Hudson River on the Bear Mountain Bridge. This seems like a huge milestone to me. It was fun walking across the bridge and being able to look up and down the river at my leisure. The Hudson is a huge river here, but I remember hiking in the Adirondaks and stepping across the highest head-water of the Hudson, which is a little brook draining a swampy area just below the summit of Mount Marcy.<\/p>\n
As I was crossing the Hudson I noticed storm clouds building in from the west, and once I was on the east side of the river I had to stop and put the rain cover on my pack as a few raindrops were falling. Soon I was back in the woods and climbing the side of a mountain, when I heard thunder to the west. A few minutes later it sounded like a freight train was coming through the woods behind me, and I was hit by a wall of wind. The trees bent over, all the leaves turned inside out, and leaves and bits of branches — most small but a few rather big — were flying through the air and hitting me. I wasn't sure what to do so I found the fattest, sturdiest looking tree I could and stood in its lee. My thinking was that the tree would hopefully stop any large branches from hitting me directly.<\/p>\n
Well, it was all over in ten minutes or so, but it felt like an eternity while it was going on. When I heard sirens going off in the valley below it only added to my anxiety. Once the worst was over I felt an incredible elation. Living removed from the comforts of home sometimes subjects you to discomfort, but it also exposes you to euphoric moments. I have been smiling all afternoon since.<\/p>\n
So right now I am sitting in the pavilion at the ball field of the Graymoor Monastery. There is a shower, though it is cold, a sink with running water, electricity, picnic tables, and a porta-john across the field. Since it is a ball field I wasn't sure how I was going to set up my hammock, but I solved that dilemma by setting it up between the steel uprights of the soccer goal. It turned out to be the perfect size for my hammock.<\/p>\n
—
"Home is where I hang my food bag"<\/p>\n
Monkeywrench Tuesday, 7\/7 AT Miles = 15.3 \/ 1398.9Other Miles = 0.4 \/ 48.4Total Miles = 15.7 \/ 1447.3 Whew! An eventful day! Early this morning I had to cross the Palisades Parkway during morning rush hour. This was like a game of live-action Frogger, only without the reset button. At the time I thought that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at_thru_hike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Allen Freeman
allen@allenf.com<\/a>
www.allenf.com<\/a>
allenf.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"