NY AT Day 3 (4/22/25)

I can't say that I was well rested upon waking up in the Appalachian Motel. The beds weren't comfortable and I didn't sleep especially well. That said, at least I was able to get a morning shower, which is always a plus.

After Parched and I checked out, we went to the Crystal Cafe for breakfast. This place was an absolute winner. The service was quick and friendly, the food was delicious, the atmosphere was nice, and the prices were more than fair. I especially enjoyed the strawberry/banana smoothie that I had with my breakfast.

Once that was finished, we drove towards the trailhead. The original plan was to start from the Wawayanda State Park headquarters, but Parched didn't like the fact that the place was gated and had hours. There was a concern that we might not be able to get out when we finished, or that we might not be able to leave a car overnight, so we ended up parking at a nearby roadside trailhead instead.

The trailhead was a bit buggy, so I was more than happy to get moving. I had planned to fill up a water bottle at Wawayanda State Park, so I was carrying only one liter of water instead of my usual two. This helped with carrying less weight, but I had to ration my water a bit more than I normally would have.

We would spend as lot of the day up on a rocky ridge line, but first we had to get there. Crossing back into New York was a good start towards that goal.

Once we were back in New York, we had to do some rock climbing. Honestly, this was the fun type of rock climbing, where you have to find handholds and pull yourself up, as opposed to the boring and monotonous type of climbing where you're picking your way through rocks underfoot. You can see a picture of Parched climbing below.

When we made it to the ridge line, we were greeted with an American flag waving from a piece of wood up on the rocky ridge. It was a patriotic sight. It reminded me a bit of the Muppet Movie, where Kermit says to Robin, "This is the patriotic part." Robin asks, "Should we stand up?" and Kermit gives him a quick, "No." Fozzie then goes on to sing "America the Beautiful." Thankfully for Parched, I did not feel inspired to sing.

We would spend most of the day up on the rocky ridge line, following a northeastern course while Greenwood Lake sat off to our right. This went on for miles. I can't think of many other sections of the Appalachian Trail that are similar, at least not in the northeast. I can't speak for the south, as I haven't hiked the AT down there.

We came across several interesting sights, such as a log with a strange swirling twisted pattern.

We also found that the trail had red rocks everywhere. I always associated Red Rocks as being a place in Colorado. One of my friends suggested that red rocks are an indicator of high iron content. I am no geologist, but that sounds right to me.

One of my favorite aspects of hiking are iron rung ladders, so I was excited to come across one that was there to assist you with climbing a sheer rock face. One of my favorite trails in the world is the Bee Hive Trail in Acadia, and it has lots of those ladders.

As I mentioned earlier, the trail was remarkably consistent. We stayed up on the ridge line, went up and down the rocks, and glanced over at Greenwood Lake to our right for most of the day. Finally, though, it came to an end. We reached a trail sign that directed us down into the town of Greenwood Lake if we wanted to go there, or we could stay on the AT.

Having already been in town that morning, we had no desire to stop, so we continued onward. After a few miles, this brought us to a road crossing, and at the road crossing there was a note in the FarOut app saying that there was an ice cream place nearby. It was quite hot at this point, with my thermometer getting as high as 82 degrees, which is way too hot for backpacking. I thought that the ice cream place was closed, but Parched called them and discovered that they were open, so we decided to hike 0.2 miles out of our way to go get ice cream.

For me, it was totally worth it. The ice cream place, called Bellvale Farms, was awesome. It was a little local creamery with a breathtaking view up on a hill. The people were super friendly, and they even let us use their water spigot to fill our water bottles and their bathroom to clean up. They also had an outlet for hikers to charge electronics.

Oh, and the ice cream was delicious! I got a double scoop of vanilla in their homemade waffle cone with rainbow sprinkles.

It was my first ice cream of the season, and it really hit the spot in the heat. I think Parched got a mint chocolate chip double scoop, if I remember correctly. Once we left the ice cream place, we could quickly tell that the ice cream was having opposite effects on us. The sugar and morale boost gave me a lot of energy, and my hiking got stronger. Parched, on the other hand, was having stomach issues after the ice cream, and these would only get worse from there. It was actually a strange juxtaposition, as I do suffer from a small degree of lactose intolerance and Parched doesn't, so one would have expected things to be the opposite way.

After climbing over yet more rocks, we finally made it to the Wildcat Shelter for the night. The FarOut map was inaccurate here, as it showed the shelter trail as a loop trail, which it is not. We got there around 2:30. We had originally been considering pushing on since we had a bunch of hours of daylight left, but there was nowhere good to push on to. Besides, given Parched's stomach, he was in no condition to push on. Thus, we stopped.

We were eventually joined by Bass Clef, another section hiker. He started from about the same place we started at the start of the day, except that he had stayed in a shelter. He was a nice guy, and I enjoyed chatting with him. He did turn out to be a snorer, but I was tired enough that it didn't bother me too much.

I was happy that the Wildcat Shelter had a bear box, although it wasn't a very good bear box. It had no way of sealing it shut, so a bear could have easily just opened it and taken our food. I suspect that such disrepair at shelters will become more and more common given federal funding cuts to the outdoors.

Parched continued to have stomach problems into the night, and all he could stand to eat were plain tortillas. That wasn't going to be enough calories to sustain him, we both knew. We talked about possibilities for the next day. We were hoping that he could get his stomach under control and push on, but if not, we knew he was going to need to get off trail. All we could do was wait and see what the next day brought.

Always remember, you can't take flight until you spread your wings!