Today's miles 21.3. AT miles 1370
A fun day of boardwalks and rocks today. We survived last nights heavy rain and hail, the tent was still very wet this morning though, luckily everything inside remained dry. We were walking for 8am. It was downhill for a couple of miles and then we reached a lovely, proper boardwalk, not just planks of wood, over a large swamp area to Pochuck Creek Suspension Bridge and beyond. The boardwalk was just under a mile (0.8 miles) in total. There were lots of red winged blackbirds calling to each other in the bull rushes and we could hear lots of croaking frogs/toads. A little bit further and over more planks of wood style boardwalk and we reached Heaven Hill Farm. A Farmshop/Deli/Garden Centre where we stopped for coffee and cake break. Lots of locals were buying their bedding plants.
From the farm shop it was a steep rocky climb up to Wawayanda Mountain. We passed a firefighter on the way up. There had been a fire on the mountain a few days earlier started by a careless camper and he was heading up to check that it was totally out. The fires can stay smouldering in hidden duff in the rocks and relight again if not careful apparently. We called in at Wayayanda mountain Shelter for a quick break about three miles after the summit. After the Shelter the trail became more challenging with a mixture of woodland paths followed by rocky ridges. Thirteen miles into the day we crossed the state line leaving New Jersey and entering New York, our ninth state. New Jersey as Nigel put it was all Rocky Tops and Soggy Bottoms! It was definitely the wettest state, not because of the rain we've had but because it had so many swamp/wetlands.
The rocky tops became more challenging requiring a bit of scrambling in places but also good fun. We had a ladder to climb at one point. We had a heavy rain shower around three o'clock which lasted on and off for a couple of hours. It made the rocks a bit more difficult in places, they could be quite slippy. There were great views from the tops again down to Greenwood Lake and an American flag on top of Prospect Rock. Nigel reconstructed the famous Iwo Jima image. A couple of miles before we finished there was a hotdog stand we'd been looking forward to but unfortunately it was shut.
We had two more rock obstacles to tackle before we reached the Shelter, Eastern Pinnacles and Cats Rocks. Both very pleasant rocky scrambles as the sun came out. We reached Wildcat Shelter about 6:30, it's a Saturday night and a bank holiday weekend so it was very busy with other campers but we found a tent spot next to Wet Scary Dog.
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