May 30 South Fields, NY to William Brien Shelter, NY 11 miles

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A nice quiet night in a bed, in a building! Even though we were in a motel and not a shelter the internal clock went off by 5:30AM. We had packed most of our gear last night so little needed to get done. Final showers and shave, breakfast of oatmeal then off to the trail. We made a stop at the post office to mail out a map no longer needed and the card for our camera.

8:30 and standing by the road with our thumb out trying not to walk the two miles uphill to the trail. Ten minutes went by without any luck so we started walking. Cars and trucks whizzed by without so much as a break light. After a half mile a guy in a pickup stopped and picked us up, were we ever grateful.

The weather report said it will be good walking weather for the next week. The sky was clearing and about 60 degrees. The first mile into this park the AT ran through was a mild uphill grade. Not long after crossing the NY Thruway the trail took a right turn and a sharp incline upwards. The morning went well with tons of weekend and day hikers everywhere. We went by a 100 year old flooded out coal mine. Some large ponds and we even got a picture of what little we could see of the New York City skyline.

We did some great rock climbing on a thing called the "Lemon Squeezer." Have a fun video of both of us climbing there. We have seven days food with us now so the uphills were slow. Two deer flushed at one stream bed we came to after lunch. Not 50' later I saw a doe laying down just 10' from the trail. We got a shot of that and moved on, she never even twitched while we were there. I made a few trail finding errors today, but none too bad or long. We made the shelter by 2:45PM a short day with all the climbing and extra weight.

There is a spring here for water. Other hikers said a pump filter would work well. We had problems with all the organics suspended in the water so on to plan B. We dipped the water out in my big cup. That was strained through a pack towel into the cook pot. Then we used the filter to clean it one more time as it filled our water bags. One hour to filter seven liters of water. While working on the water there was a tree that came crashing down just a few hundred feet away. CC went to investigate the thing while supper was cooking. She said the trunk was rotten and limbs were scattered all over where it fell.

15 scouts and eight weekenders are sharing this shelter area with us. We are glad we got here early to claim a flat tent spot. Supper is finished, the food is hung in the trees properly so the bears can't use it for a piñata. The sun is dropping towards the horizon and it is starting to cool down. Shortly we will retreat to the tent for the night. Tomorrow another 11 mile day and another camp spot.

Patrick, Deborah Mooney aka OD & CC
All Who Wander Are Not Lost

For Photos and Video: http://odandccslongwalk.shutterfly.com/

OD and CC have been marking their path with a GPS using SPOT Satellite Messenger and can be tracked at the following link. It keeps track of their last 7 days: http://tinyurl.com/o2g53z

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