Day: 085
Date: Tuesday, 18 July 2023
Start: Mashipacong Shelter (AT Mile 1334.3)
Finish: Louemma Creek (AT Mile 1356.0)
Daily Kilometres: 34.4 (Ascent 2940', Descent 3566')
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 2275.4
Weather: Very warm, humid, hazy and partly sunny.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts
Lunch: Egg salad subs, ice-creams
Dinner: Rehydrated meals.
Aches: Dave - some niggles and very tired; Julie - reporting a lot of mosquito bites.
Highlight: In mid-afternoon, for several miles, the trail passed through the Wallkill National Wildlife Refuge, a vast marshy area. It was very peaceful, with birdlife and other animals present. Julie even spotted a bear as we were leaving.
Lowlight: Some late afternoon rocky trail, heat, humidity, and mosquitoes were the lowlights today.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We packed up and left the shelter camping area at 6:30am hoping for some easier trail today. It started well, and we had some excitement when Julie spotted three bear cubs climbing a tree near the trail, though by the time Dave got there only some fleeing black behinds were visible. That seemed a good omen but, alas, we were soon back on very rocky trail going up and down over ledges and outcrops, and no views. It was a little irksome knowing that a multi-use trail, the Iris Trail, was paralleling our course and was much easier.
Despite the rocks we made reasonable time to the Highpoint State Park HQ which was our target breakfast stop, arriving by 9:00am. We purchased some cold drinks to go along with our pop tarts which we consumed on a nearby park bench. Very pleasant!
After breakfast the trail continued to be rocky as it climbed to a lookout near the Highpoint Tower atop the highest mountain in New Jersey, but the views were very hazy. From there, after a long descent, the trail became much easier walking and our pace and enjoyment improved. The terrain became relatively flat and we passed by farms and houses through some meadows and very pleasant forest, though the low-lying trail was very boggy in parts.
Around 1:00pm we reached the road going into the village of Unionville, and detoured to the general store there to buy some supplies and get some lunch and cold drinks. Other thru-hikers had had the same idea and we were greeted by several we knew who were already enjoying food and drink on the store's verandah. Soon we joined them and joined the social chat. There was a German girl there who had been bitten by something while she slept last night and had a massively swollen eye, but was being quite stoic about it.
We had more miles to do, so left before the others, some of whom did not seem keen to walk any more miles today. We roadwalked back to the trail and then followed it through the beautiful and peaceful Wallkill National Wildlife Refuge (see above), before finishing the day with a long rocky climb over a mountain before descending to a creek where we got some water and decided to camp illegally. There are roads and houses nearby and we can hear traffic, but don't think anybody can see us.
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