Today's miles 22.2. AT miles 1311.8
Today we passed the three fifths way mark, 1300 mile mark and entered a new state, New Jersey. We are on bear lookout again, we've still not seen one. New Jersey is supposed to have the highest concentration of bears per square mile so we're hopeful. However today was not going to be the day, the trail was too busy. We passed numerous groups of school kids out backpacking, around 200 in total, a whole school year from a school in Newark - not our UK Newark!
It was a warm humid but cloudy day with 60% chance of rain/thunderstorms forecast in the afternoon. Luckily we had only a couple of spits of rain. We were up and walking for 8:50 this morning. We crossed the huge Delaware River Bridge and then it was a long but steady climb this morning over about eight miles up to Kittatinny Mountain. We passed a lovely large pond, Sunfish Pond, a couple of miles before the summit. The trail followed a rocky path around the pond passing some interesting rock sculptures on the lake edge. On the summit of Kittatinny there was a large stone cairn pile like we would have at home on some Mountain tops. There were great views from the top, all you could see were trees for miles and miles.
The trail was quite rocky again today in parts, we thought we'd be leaving the rocks behind in Pennsylvania, but not so, they carry on into New Jersey. The trail remained pretty level for the rest of the day with only a couple of small downs and ups. This afternoon we passed a lovely couple doing trail maintenance and had a nice chat with them, we're the first thru hikers they'd seen this year.
We arrived at our camp spot next to a stream and footbridge about 5:45. There were a few midges and mosquitoes around in the damp woods, stand still too long and they get you. We're safe in our tent though it has lots of bug netting. Breeze walked past not long after we'd set up tent and stopped for a quick chat, he was continuing onto the next shelter about three miles away.
I forgot yesterday to mention some great news we'd heard. Extra Mile, our friend who had to get off the trail about a month ago due to an infected blister got back on the trail again yesterday. He is hiking with our German friends Wall-E and Pillow who are about a day and a half behind us now. Milk Monster had to return to Germany for 4-5 days for work but plans to do a few bigger mileage days to catch up with the rest of his team when he returns so as not to miss any sections of the trail. Hopefully we'll get to see them all again at some point on the trail.
The 60% chance of thunderstorms happened during the night starting around 2am. We had the biggest, loudest, angriest thunderstorm, every 5-10 seconds there was lightening which lit up the sky and our tent and huge cracks of thunder which made the earth move. The storm lasted just over an hour. We were glad it was during the night and we were in our tent and not out walking in that. More storms are forecast for the next couple of days, hopefully they are nighttime ones too.
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