Aug 2nd, Day Two

Watching Miles roll over this morning one would have thought he was recovering from a shooting or a stabbing.  Pain rolled across his face as his legs changed position.  Finally a little before check out time he managed to limp to life, and slowly start to gather himself together for the day.  We discovered that the viewing screen on the camera was not working, so no reviewing our photos during the trip.  We will just have to hope it still works correctly and use the manual viewfinder to shoot. 

One of the bucks down the hill.

We check out of the hotel and limp on down the road.  Knowing he would be sore Miles only planned to make 5.75 miles today.  The trail led through a narrow strip of woods that ran below an apartment complex.  Its saving grace was it was on the side of a very steep hill so the civilization was rarely in view. At one point looking down the hill we saw three buck deer with velvet antlers which was pretty cool.  There were also some really awesome views of the Hudson River again as we topped many of the rock bluffs long the shore. 

Me enjoying snack time.

Views from the top of the cliffs.

By the end of the day Miles legs were actually feeling better than the beginning, we had succeeded in working some of the soreness out of them.  For the night we were being picked up by a gentleman named Ed (thank you Ed!!) who allowed campers to camp in his back yard for this leg of the journey.  Considering the first park shelter is over twenty miles from the hotel, this is a huge blessing.  Ed has also been a through hiker and hiking enthusiast for a while so he had some good knowledge and stories to share with us. 

Another great view of the Hudson River.

The maiden raising of the tent.

We put up the tent for the first time and made our first meal on our little denatured alcohol stove; we were easing into the camping well.  Miles had to use his knife to add many more oxygen holes to the flashing around the stove before it worked, in the end it looked like it had run afoul of Al Capone and a tommy gun.  We were eating ramen noodles in no time. 

Traveled 5.75 miles of trail.

-SM-

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