telephone pioneer shelter

16.8 miles, 1434.5 total.
wow, what a thunderstorm last night. rained so hard I thought the roof was going to cave in. again, hard to get up when it's raining. didn't start until 9.
nice hike except for the rain, but it cleared up around 2:00.
after the climbing for the first 5 miles the trail came down to a highway and I found a convenience store about 1/4 mile off the trail. I bought and consumed: root beer, coffee, orange juice, Gatorade, and 12 chocolate donuts. man, that was good. I also bought another root beer to save for dinner. had lunch at a shelter at the 9 mile mark. it cleared up after that and I had a nice slow hike in the afternoon with some sun. I tied my wet stinky socks to the back of my pack and they dried quickly. dry smelly stuff is always easier to handle than wet smelly stuff.
passed several streams and a nice little lake. then, after going back into the woods from re east walk around the lake, I fell and made a bunch of noise...which scared a bear who was hiding behind a tree. he took off up the hill at a blinding pace, so I took off down the trail just as fast. he was a good medium bear - maybe 200 pounds.
only bad part about the trail in this section of NY is that it goes by so many residential areas. I can always hear kids, dogs, and traffic.
here with a couple of sectioners. and met the manager of trail maintainers for this section - she gave me some granola bars. went well with my luke warm root beer!
bought a major league baseball application for my iPhone, so now I can listen to the mets-yankees game tonight. let's go mets!

later,
L


-- Post From My iPhone