Trail Angels have been leaving bottled water at the road crossings. The streams in NY are a bit dodgy, so it is much appreciated.
I had to take my backpack off and throw it up on the ledge to the left to squeeze through here. Immediately after I had to do the same thing to do a vertical rock climb. There was a route labeled "Easy Way", but I'm not out here for that.
My sneaky camp spot.
Miles Today: 22.3
Mile Marker: 1,403.3
I didn't do the miles I should have yesterday, and I needed to make up for it today. However my lazy kicked in and I didn't get started until 8:30. By 11:00 DaVinci and Hop Along had closed the two mile gap between us. I hiked with them a while and discovered they were going into town today from an earlier point. My plan was to camp near town and go in tomorrow to save money, but splitting a room with them would make it feasible to go in tonight. They confirmed that wasn't a problem, and I refocused on adding another two miles to an already long day.
Around 6:00 we caught back up and DaVinci and Hop Along were both aggravated due to a major miscommunication. The owner of the motel said he could pick them up at the earlier road crossing if they called by 5:00. They did call by 5:00, but he said he didn't realize where they wanted to be picked up and wouldn't come get them. Now their choices were to hike another 5.5 miles making for a 25+ mile day for them or try to hitch into town. Hitchhiking is illegal in New York, and apparently they enforce it. Hitchhiking didn't seem to be working, so we started to hike in. Shortly after we were debating quitting, camping, and going in in the morning. We called and moved the reservation to tomorrow. About ten minutes later we all realized we budgeted water to go into town. The next water stop was at the town road crossing 4.5 miles away. We had no choice.
None of us were having a good hike the rest of the way up the mountain, but then a beacon of hope appeared. Vending machines! We had reached the top of the mountain, and it had a parking lot with vending machines. We all downed a drink and had the energy to make it the last 2.2 miles down off the mountain. We literally jogged a half mile of it. We called the motel, asked if we could have the room we canceled, and if they would come pick us up. She (husband and wife own the place) said she would come pick us up. I thanked her and let her know there would be three of us. She said in that case we would have to wait fifteen minutes for her husband to come get us instead. Five minutes later he calls and says there is no way three of us are staying in one room, even if we pay more. I told the guys not to worry, I would find a camp spot and get my own room tomorrow. They headed off, and I tried to figure out where to camp in the middle of civilization. There was no way I was going back up that mountain to get to a back country camping spot. I found myself a nice little spot behind the hill of the closed pool. Hudson River and train adjacent. Nice little piece of real estate.