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| A cluster water spring. |
This morning we had to backtrack about a half mile to the
trail, then continued down the ridge, and eventually descended to begin a
little over a twelve mile section of road walking. It was back country roads so there was no
place for us to replenish our dwindling food supplies like we had hoped. The whole way we never passed a store at
all. It was mostly farms and country
residences. When we had about four miles
to go and turned onto the last road there was a cluster spring pouring water
out of a pipe in front of an old house. We
stopped to refill our water and take a quick break. The elderly lady who lived in the house was
out working in the garden and came over to tell us about the water. She said that it was supposed to have medicinal
principles; it had smaller water molecules so it got absorbed into your system
easier and cleaned out toxins. Miles
figured that since he was going to drink it anyway that was just an added
bonus.
Right after we left there we were hiking up a hill, when a
car slowed down to stop beside us. There
was a man driving and a lady in the passenger seat. He asked, “Are you hiking the Long Path.” Miles was shocked he knew of it since it was
a pretty obscure trail even in New York, but confirmed that was our
mission. They talked for a bit and the
gentleman was nice enough to offer a ride, but we had to politely refuse. We would not feel like it was right to ride a
part of the path, which would seem like cheating to us. The vehicle departed without us, about a half
hour later however we saw it coming back down the road. The same guy rolled down his window. He hailed us, “Well we went home and got
something to eat, and we figured we should bring you something too.” His wife pulled out a bottle of beer and
chocolate almond bar and handed it to us.
Miles eyes lit up and a huge smile crossed his face, we thanked them
profusely. This was not simply a Natty
Ice and a Hershey’s bar; this was a craft brew and organic dark chocolate and
almonds, some real gourmet food. We squirreled
it away in the backpack and decided to use it as a reward for when we hiked to
the top of the hill we had to climb later that day.
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| The waterfall we hiked to, welcome to the Catskills. |
When we reached the end of the road walking we took our
first trail into the Catskills. This national
park was a major part of our journey. We
climbed up the hill to a really nice water fall; we sat down to rest and enjoy
the sights near two ladies and a dog doing the same thing. Again a conversation was struck up, they were
asking what we were doing as Miles was reviewing our map, and figuring out how
far we could go today. The ladies were
very interested in the journey and offered their support both verbally and by
donating what food they didn’t want any more.
There was a granola bar, some fig newtons, almonds, trail mix, and
chocolate dusted rice cakes.
 |
| Our beer and chocolate. |
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| Our gift snacks. |
All in all we were saved today by the generosity of strangers;
it was wonderful how everyone was willing to lend a hand and give something
that made a world of difference to us.
Miles figures we were given two meals worth of food and that may have
been the difference between making the next town comfortably and making it
starving and out of food. Thank you to everyone
who helped out.
Traveled 24.3 miles of trail.
-SM-
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