Blogs from Warwick, New York, United States, North America

On Wednesday morning, we left the motel around 8:00 AM and drove south into New York state. We checked out one trailhead around Garrison, NY, that went to a viewpoint called Deming Hill but the AT here was overgrown and traversed a marshy area with tons of mosquitoes. After hiking about a half mile fighting the bugs and humidity, we decided to turn around and go to our second choice – Anthony’s Nose. Anthony’s Nose is a rocky outcropping just above the Hudson River overlooking the Bear Mountain Bridge. The AT crosses the Hudson River here along that bridge. We parked at the base of the ridge that the viewpoint is located on and hiked the AT northbound for about a half mile – straight up. You only gain about 500 feet in that half mile ... read more

Wensday - Batsh and Shi, a guy from couchsurfing (from Rehovot) that each of us met separately before that (I met him in a meeting in Julie's house) and happened to be in NYC too at the time, came to Warwick and I picked them up from the bus station - I drove for the first time outside of Israel and on a car with a disfunctional manual gear. We ate lunch at camp, organized our stuff and started walking to the Appalachian Trail (that passes about a 30 minute walk from camp). At the beginning of the walk we found a cooler filled with drinks, probably for the trail hikers, but our bags were full with water so we didn't take anything. The trail went into the forest, a huge forest, actually for the entire ... read more

on sunday (july 1st) there was canada day (appearantly that's how they call their independence day) which was pretty uneventful exept for some canadians walking around camp with flags/flag colors, and at night i stayed up very late to preper my lecture for yom israel (or yom israel day, as some people here like to distort it :) which was on monday (july 2nd) - a day in camp that's dedicated to isreal. most of my time working on it i spent battling with the useless pieces of junk that around here they call 'computers', and one of which even destroyed my cute mp3 player. on monday we had an israeli lunch (falafel) and after it all of the electives were about israel. i did one about sderot and the music that came out of it ... read more

yesterday (or today, depends how you look at it...) the first round of camp participants arrived, and thus ended the week of activities for the staff that we had until wendsday. now most of us (including me) started doing our job. but before that i still have to write about what went on staff week since last time i wrote. well after shabat, that was very laid back, most of the week was consisted of prayers, moving furniture around camp and mostly of very boring lectures and youth-movement-style programs about camp rules, activities etc, most of which had nothing to do with us security guards (but we still had to be in them). some nice activities that are worth mentioning are: i climbed an alpine tower, which is basically like a climbing wall but easier and ... read more