T+30 Phoning it in

T+30 (June 28, 2020)

Navigation Report:
Start Point: Stealth tent site @ NY Route 52 (mile 1436.9)
Destination: Telephone Pioneers Shelter (mile 1448.6)

Travel Log:
10:00 Break Camp (mile 1436.9)
10:25 Field (mile 1437.7)
10:30 Largest Oak on AT
10:40 I-84 (mile 1438.3)
11:10 Eastern Newt (mile 1439.5)
11:40-11:50 View (mile 1440.5)
12:05-12:40 Morgan Stewart Shelter (mile 1440.8)
1:10 Depot Hill Rd. (mile 1441.9)
3:00 Stream (mile 1445.3)
4:15 View (mile 1448.2)
4:30 Telephone Pioneers Shelter (mile 1448.6)

Daily Mileage: 11.7
Total Mileage: 294.3

Commander’s Report:
I actually thought I was going to make it out of camp early today. HAHA joke's on me! It seems like every morning goes something like:

5:30 "It's too early to get up"
5:40 Grabs trowel and TP. Runs off into woods.
6:00 Starts heating up water for tea and food.
6:05 Starts working on blog posts
6:40 starts eating 
8:15 “HOLY $#!@, IT’S 8:15!” Starts disassembling camp.
9:30 “Alright, just this one last thing to do.”
10:00 Leaves camp after doing 15 other things in addition to that one thing.

Anyway, after departing I found Trail Magic at the trail head on the other side of the road. Someone had left two boxes of Nokia "super food" smoothies for the hikers. I'm 90% certain that I grabbed the last one. Consumed it around lunch time: it was just ok. It had a bit of an unappealing texture to me, but otherwise it tasted pretty good. Happy to add in some variety out here, but I don’t see myself picking these up for myself in the future.

Trail Magic

​The trailhead also had a really nice public art display. A group of 8 paintings made by 6th grade students at La Grange Middle School. Kudos to those students, their art is better than mine! Also, kudos to the adults who organized that, I really enjoyed it. Less than a mile after where I started, the AT is said to pass through a field. It may once have been a field, but I'd say it no longer qualifies as one.

6th grade art display

​Just a bit after the "field" is the largest oak tree on the Appalachian Trail. It is over 6 feet in diameter and is believed to be over 300 years old. My hiking poles are in front of it, for reference.

Largest oak on the AT

​Right after all that, I crossed I-84 and I remembered to take photographic evidence.

​About a mile after I-84 I noticed this little Eastern Newt on the trail. I just had to take a picture of it. Funny thing is that I always thought it was a type of salamander growing up. Glad I now know the truth. I met about a dozen of these little guys today, most after the rain.

Eastern Newt

​
​A mile after the newt is a view point with views off to the South. Seen worse views in New York!

​Just a bit after that view is the Morgan Stewart Shelter. I stopped in to refill my water. The water source for this shelter is a well, apparently with cast iron components. The water tastes like licking a rusty nail, but a bad taste won't hurt me.

A mile north of the shelter the trail crosses Depot Hill Rd. On either side of the road these signs were installed. I really like the wooden / homemade feel of most everything surrounding the trail.

​Randomly, some joker propped this boulder up with a stick. I just had to take a picture of that!

I’m surprised that stick can hold the boulder up!

​Right around this point, the weather started getting quite threatening. Sure enough, about a half hour later it started raining. I donned my rain gear on the shore of Nuclear Lake. If you look closely, you can see the rain in the water's reflections.

Nuclear Lake

​The final attraction of the day was a nice viewpoint that I reached just after the rain had died down. Best viewpoint today, so let's share a couple of pics.

The shelter is less than a half mile away from the viewpoint. It's going to be a busy are there tonight. A guy, who I had passed a couple times today, was there. He is meeting his thru-hiker son and his son's "tramily" at the shelter tonight. There's supposed to be 7 of that crew in total. So, I bailed and went back to the tent site about 0.2 miles south. Worth it for the quiet alone, but all the sites at the shelter are on weird angled ground, whereas the tent only location had really flat tent sites. Double whammy for the shelter.

Back at the tent sites, I met two hikers that I had passed during the rain. They are also planning on staying at the tent sites. They seem like they’ll be better company than a group of young adults.