After hike naked day, we arrived in Unionville where we stayed at the Outhouse, formerly known as “the Mayors” house. The experience can be characterized by the following rules:
1.) Do not use words with over 3 syllables (or else you owe Bill, the 81 yr old cook a quarter)
2.) Do not call Butch “sir” (or he will punch you in the face)
3.) Treat the house like you would treat your own (unless you start throwing furniture)
4.) Only do #1 in the downstairs toilet
Included in the $10 donation: shower, place to sleep, dinner, breakfast, soda, a beer (the next 3 are 50 cents each) and a highly entertaining experience.
It was a word-of-mouth-only hostel which is in it’s last year and we had heard about it from the sobo with the iguana. The hostel had such a reputation that 26 hikers managed to show up, creating a large bubble. It was then I realized that we are about to be taken over by the vein…slowing down has its downsides I guess. No, not really.
In the morning, we headed out, stopped at the general store, and tried to stagger how we were all leaving, albeit unsuccessfully. I ended up walking out with Traveler and Hopi and we took a break in a few miles with a new group of hilarious just-out-of-high-school hikers Dark Star, Scruggs, Castor, Upgrade, and Cornie. We all ended up walking through these large farmer’s fields and swampy area more or less together until we hit the boardwalk where I caught Abolitionist and War Cry for lunch. Since Walking Man and Grace n Glory were being slack-packed by the Outhouse, we ran into them and after Grace n Glory (a woman in her 50s), who hacked up a bigger flem-ball than I have ever seen of a cat, told us there was an awesome Farmer’s Market .1 off trail about a mile after the mile-long boardwalk.
We all headed there and I split a watermelon with Castor. Eventually, we headed out up Wawayanda Mtn (yeah, try and pronounce that one 5 times). Then from the top of there it was about 3.5 to the Wawayanda shelter. It ended up raining about half way up the climb and at least drizzling through the whole night. It was a nice needed free shower since by that time it was so hot that I had negated the shower from the Outhouse.
I ended up sheltering that night because I hate setting up a tent in the rain, but that was a last straw moment on the bugs. The amount of mosquitoes were ridiculous, it was like they spawned out of thin air and were mutating blood sucking monsters worse than Freddy Krugar…they can haunt you when you sleep and when you’re awake.
From there, we hiked 10 miles the next day to another ice cream place where they even had vegan sorbet. It was not the easiest 10 miles as it was awesome exposed small rock scrambles. But awesome, and the sorbet was a good reward. We took a solid 2 hour break there and ended up getting kicked off a picnic table, so we pulled out the z-rests and sat on the ground instead.
We planned on doing 6 more miles that evening, yet when we got 4 miles in and were about to cross a road, we saw a guy chilling with his pick-up and backpack and we started talking to him. It was Paddio, a thru-hiker in 2000 who was out doing trail magic and he cooked us up all kinds of good stuff out of a grill in the back including some trail bombs and a concoction named after Crazy Horse.
Instead of doing the 2 more miles, we hung out with him for a long time blasting Johnny Cash and then went a quarter mile to camp near a waterfall. In the morning, we got up early and hiked another difficult 8 miles of rock scrambles to NY 17 where War Cry’s sister picked us up and took us to their parent’s house here in Long Island, NY. So, we’re taking the weekend off. Thursday, we spent doing laundry, taking showers, watching ridiculous amounts of soccer that we missed and his mom had DVR’d, and chilling. We went out to Nick’s, an Italian place for dinner with one of War Cry’s friends, then came back and watched more soccer.
Unfortunately, Friday, both War Cry and I were really sick with a 24 hour stomach bug and lounged around all day throwing up while Abolitionist ate enough food for all three of us. And of course we watched more soccer, until we ran out and then watched an America’s Funniest Home Videos marathon until we fell asleep.
Yesterday was an awesome beach day which included swimming, lounging, burring Abolitionist in the sand, and some people watching that wasn’t thru-hikers…how entertaining. Especially the guido Jersey shore guys attempting to play frisbee behind us.
Now, we have just finished breakfast and are watching the England-Germany game after the US disappointed us yesterday, then we’re not sure! Awesomeness.