This is the Morgan Stewart Shelter. We thought we were going to have this lovely place all to our own. Literally 15 seconds before the sky opened up again to rain, Scotty Too-lite (that's his trail name) showed up. Man could this guy talk. He talked from the moment he showed till he went to sleep. Heck, he even talked in his sleep.
At every shelter or campground there's a log book where people write little quips about the day. Here's Elvis Trailsley's entry from the summer solstice. He told us this story when we ran into him at the shelter. He took a dip in Nuclear Lake (about 4 miles from the shelter) and watched the bees fly amongst the clover while spring ticked away. Pretty cool way to spend the solstice. It's also another AT tradition to hike naked on that day. There was one entry in there about someone doing it, but since we weren't there, we cannot confirm nor deny it happened.
Day 7: Morgan Stewart Shelter to Pawling, NY. This was to be a 10 mile day.
The original plan was to just walk 7.6 miles to the next shelter, Telephone Pioneers and spend the night there and then walk into Pawling the next day. However, the only water source at the shelter is a stream that was dry. So the next nearest source would be to walk 7/10ths of a mile downhill to someone's house and fill up our water bottles (10 liters of water, which is very heavy) and walk back the 7/10ths of a mile to the shelter. So we decided to just hike into Pawling and grab a hotel and spend a day or two there. Then we'd catch the train back to NYC.
Here I am packing up our stuff to get on the trail. That's Scotty Too-Lite in the background. Yep, he's talking too.
One of the few views from the trail. I think this is Hosner Mountain.
A much more enjoyable self portrait. Kim and I are much happier here.
As you can see, some of the trail requires a tight squeeze between rocks.
Never seen red/pink/orange mushrooms before. So I took a picture.
One of the dozen or so streams we crossed.
Another volunteer built bridge. This one was a little more wobbley than the others.
The side of this road was covered with these. I think it's a hibiscus, but I'm not flower expert.
I didn't realize much of New York is swampy. You can see the swamp at the far end of the power lines.
This reminded me of the mushroom from Super Mario Bros. I think however, instead of getting an extra life, this one might have ended one.
Yep you guessed it. Lost again. We took another blue blazed side trail to avoid climbing a really rocky mountain and found ourselves on a very lightly traveled trail. We lost our way a few times. Luckily we had learned to just double back, find the nearest blue blaze and scan for the next one. We were only lost for 5 minutes this time.
Another little newt. I almost stepped on him.
The village of Pawling. Yep, they have villages back east.
A cool looking farm.
This is Dover Oak. It's the largest oak tree on the AT. This couple had done the first half of the trail from Georgia to Pennsylvania the year before. They were doing the last half this year.
This was a really old cemetary... Wedged between two houses. Kinda weird. This was on our 3 mile walk from the trail head to the village of Pawling. About 200 yards down the road some nice lady pulled over and offered us a ride into town. Going against all the training in which my mother instilled in me, I accepted. And contrary to popular belief, I was neither molested nor killed.
We were starving, so we found a mom and pop pizza place for lunch. We ordered baby sized pizzas. This is what we got. Apparently baby sized in NY is a large everywhere else. Actually when I went up to ask for a to-go box, the old guy who ran the place saw that we were hikers and made them a little larger for us. What a nice guy.
We spent the night in Wingdale, NY. There used to be a GIGANTIC mental facility in Wingdale. This is what all of the buildings looked like. Very scary, like out of a horror movie.
Ever wonder what to do with your un-servicable American flags? Well, drop them here.
Day 8: Pawling, NY.
We decided to just kick around Pawling for the day and see what rural New York was like. It's very cool. I always think of New York as New York City. You tend to forget the state is rather large and NYC is very small. Much of New York looks like this.
The local church.
There were quite a few houses on this street that looked like this. The one next door was a funeral home.
This house was really cool. In fact, this entire street was really cool. This is one of the original streets in the heart of downtown Pawling.
Day 9: Pawling/Wingdale, NY to New York City.
We woke up bright and early and caught the train from Wingdale to New York City. The train runs through Harlem before stopping at Grand Central Station. Harlem is exactly as I imagined it. What you see in the movies is a pretty good depiction of what it really looks like. Which is weird because you can walk literally 10 blocks and you're in the Upper West Side which is the most expensive part of Manhattan. One of Kim's friends from way back, Sania, lives in New York now. So we gave her a call and she showed us around. It was awesome having our own personal tour guide. If it wasn't for her, we probably would have never figured out the subway. She also told us about the half price broadway show ticket booth. So we ended up seeing Rent that night for half price. Pretty sweet.
This is the main entrance to Grand Central Station.
This is at the Hersey's store in Times Square. Don't judge. You know you'd take a big old swig too if you could.
We went and paid our respects to the World Trade Center victims. There's Kim and her friend Sania
Some of the construction going on at Ground Zero.
You don't realize how big the WTC was until you're there. It's basically and entire city block that was destroyed.
A list of names of the people who died in the attacks. There were two other signs just like these on the other side of the blue sign, but I couldn't fit it all into the frame.
A rolling memorial to one of the people lost. The sign said, "Never Forget".
A shot from WTC tower 3. Directly in front is where the twin towers used to be.
Kim and I in the lobby of tower 3.
It's weird to think that just across the river is another state. That's New Jersey in the background.
This is the NYPD memorial for those who died in the WTC attacks. There sure are a lot of names.
This piece of pop art is called, "The Eyes." Maybe I'm a pervert, but they don't really look like eyes to me.
This is the Korean War Memorial.
That little spec between Kim and I is the Statue of Liberty. Looks much bigger on TV. Hmm... To the right of the photo is Ellis Island, the main processing facility for imigrants. Kim had found out that her relatives from Portugal were processed through the island. We wanted to take the ferry out there, but it was too late in the day to make it out there.
I decided to pick up a mandolin and belt out a jaunty tune for the passers-by.
St. Paul's cathedral. I was pondering why we don't have anything like this on the west coast, and then I realized why... Oh yeah, earthquakes.
The traditional funny hat photo. I'm a pirate! YARRRRRRR-tch.
The New York public library. Looks just like I remember from the movie Ghostbusters.
People always wonder why New York smells like garbage. Gee, I wonder.
This is Bryant Park. Very cool little park in the middle of a crazy city.
Another view of Bryant Park. It was pretty quiet here, and a nice little retreat.
Day 10: New York City.
We had pretty much the entire day to do whatever we wanted. Our flight didn't leave until 8:45pm, so we figured we'd take in another day in the city. We decided to check out some museums and Central Park. Wow, Central Park is BIG. And just as nice as Golden Gate park in San Francisco. The only hitch in this day was our flight home. We were waiting by the gate (gate 24) and about 15 minutes before we were to board the plane, an annuoncement came over the loud speaker that our flight had been moved to gate 4. Lovely, it's the other side of the terminal. And because of all the construction, you had to take a shuttle bus between the two sections of the terminal. So all 200+ of us got up and marched over to gate 4. We didn't end up getting onto the plane until 9:10 or so, and then we just sat there. It was close to an hour before the pilot came on the PA and told us it was because a Delta flight had blown a tire between 2 of the 3 operating runways, so there was a backup of flights trying to use the only working runway. So needless to say, our flight didn't take off until 10:45pm, 2 hours late. That put us back home at 1:45am. It was a long day.
The New York Museum of Natural History. You really need a full day to see everything inside. So we just looked at the stuff that interested us.
A ginormous turtle. I think that's the technical term anyway.
An ancient shark. I wonder if they were as tasty as modern day sharks.
A couple of mammoths.
A giant sloth. This thing was 8 feet tall.
One of my favorite dinosaurs. The triceratops. This one is dead unfortunately.
A stegosaurus. These things had brains the size of a walnut.
The infamous T-Rex. This was the same one from the movie A Night at the Museum. Though this one didn't like to play fetch.
At first I thought this was a bride getting her photos done at the castle-thingy in Central Park. Then I realized it was a photo shoot for a magazine. Wow, the big city sure is exciting!
A self portrait of Kim and I with Central Park and the Upper East Side in the background.
I now understand why it's so expensive to get an apartment with a view of the park. I'd love to look at this every day.
A monument to some king of Poland. What it's doing in Central Park and not Poland, I'm not sure, but here it was.
I don't remember what this pond was called, but it made for a great photo.
This is turtle pond. There are a bunch of little turtles living in this pond. Every once in a while you'd see one poke its head out of the green slime to catch a breath of air.
One of the many bridges in Central Park. The architechture is so neat back east.
A little hard to read, but this is the plaque telling about Cleopatra's Needle. It's a giant stone obelisk that used to be in Alexandria, Egypt, but now resides in New York City. Of course, where else should it be?
The translation of the heiroglyphics.
And finally the obelisk. The fleshy thing is Kim, the obelisk is the big stone thingy-ma-bobber.
The statue of Alice in Wonderland. It was kinda creepy actually.
This little pond had these little remote control boats you could rent and sail around the pond. I wanted to do it but Kim said I was too old. :(
A close up of one of the boats.
A remote controlled mother duck and a remote controlled baby duck... Er... I mean real ducks.
Carnegie Hall. It's not as spectacular as I had thought.
Yep, a real life photo of me on the subway to JFK airport. And yes, it does smell like urine.
