August 19
Kristin and I left Flagstaff Friday morning under thick monsoon clouds. We checked out a few outdoor shops, Kristin needed a hiking shirt, but all the lighter colored shirts were way to big. We settle on the long sleeve she is wearing and walk out to HWY 180 to hitch. As we do so the sky opens up into a nice rain. At least its not crazy hard. We hitch a little while in the rain before heading over to hide under cover at a gas station. After the rain let's up, we head back to the road.
After twenty minutes we get a ride with a French couple enjoying a month long vacation. In America your lucky to get a week off. In France people get five weeks vacation a year. They drive us all the way to the Mather campground, where we part ways. We get a hikers site, six bucks a head, then are ravishingly hungry bellies force us to the market.
On the way over, a crowd of tourists on the road alerts us to a huge elk grazing along our path. Cars are pulled over and everyone is taking pictures. A ranger turns on his squad car siren, and makes everyone leave there. A complete party pooper. At the store we get bread, sandwich meat, and some condiments from the deli, along with pasta salad. We have dinner at the site, then figure out what extra food we need.
August 20
The next morning we plan to wake at four, but sleep in til five thirty. We pack in a hurry then head to the bus stop where we eat breakfast. The Kaibab trail head is crowded at six thirty with tourists waiting for a ranger hike. We pass them, and Kristin gets her first good view of the canyon since she was six. It's a beautiful morning to hike the canyon is clear, and the views are long. The day is threatening to be hot though. Clouds are always appreciated in the Grand Canyon.
We start hiking in shade though, and soon reach Ooh-ahh point, a major dayhike destination on the South Kaibab trail. Coincidently, the Kaibab trail is also part of the 806 mile Arizona trail. So this is a section hike of it. We take the required pics at Ooh-aah point, then hike down to Cedar Ridge where we break and enjoy the view.
Below Cedar Ridge Kristin takes off running, downhill is easy, but running kills knees. She'll feel that later. Below skeleton point we take a shade break in view of the Colorado river 2500 feet below. Bright Angel Campground, tonight's destination is also in view below, along the clear cool Bright Angel creek. We continue down into the heat, Kristin begins running again and I don't catch up to her until I find her taking a shade break below the Tonto Platform.
It's getting hot now, and we need to hustle between shade spots. We are both doing good though. Kristin's pack is pretty light, mine is fairly heavy. I have all the food, cooking stuff and tent. Basically I'm carrying three times more then I'm used too. We get to the tunnel blasted into the Vishnu Schist that leads to the Black Bridge. It is much cooler then outside, so we take a break before crossing the five hundred foot long bridge to the Canadian side of the river.
We are getting very hot, so don't take time to check out the Indian ruins. We are set on the creek. Soon we get to the sign saying, "Hot, Tired, Nearly Expired? Hop in the creek." So we do and instantly feel better. We get out and head to the small campground along the creek. My favorite site, site eight is vacant, so we snag it. After putting our food in the ammo cans that serve to protect it from animals, and hanging our packs we hang out in a pool in the creek for an hour.
After chilling in the creek, we head over to Phantom Ranch where Kristin teaches myself and Tom a guy from a neighbouring site how to play cribbage, while we drink Lemmiskey's, a combo of the Lemmy lemonade they sell at the ranch, and whiskey.
After cribbage we head to a non tourist pool that I know of just above the ranch, built by the employees for employees. I know of it since I used to work at the park, and was brought here by the ranch manager back in the day. This pool is about three and a half feet deep, and has eight ranchers enjoying the afternoon drinking Tecate. They eye us suspiciously as we enjoy the water of the best pool for miles around, but accept us after a manager from the south rim and I start talking and realize that we all know the same people from my five summers in the park.
Our neighbor Tom hooks us up with a bunch of food that he doesnt need, which helps us out greatly. Then we cook dinner in camp, and crash on the picnic table for an hour before going back to the creek below our site.
Approaching eight we make our way back to the canteen at the ranch. Along the way we pass a group led by a ranger with a black light searching for scorpions. The dayglo green scorpions glowing like neon lights under the black light are easy to spot against the rocks. There are scorpions every five feet or so on rocks.
We play more cribbage at the ranch before heading out to the Silver Bridge to stargaze, and enjoy the power of the river below the long swaying bridge that causes Kristin a little anxiety. After that its off to the tent. On the way we see another canyon Grey Fox. We saw two on the way to the bridge. When we get back to the site, I head to get water and spot my first ringtail in years.
August 21
Today is a zero day in the canyon. We are still planning on hiking today though, from our basecamp along Bright Angel Creek. Our plans include hiking up Phantom Canyon, a mile north on the Arizona Trail. There we will enjoy more pools in Phantom creek. Last night the volunteer ranger, who came by the campsite to check in with us and say hi to me, told us a story of another couple who was staying in Site eight. They along with another man made dinner reservations at the ranch, then decided to go to Phantom creek for a few hours. Before getting to the first pool an eigth of a mile up Phantom canyon, a flash flood hit them. The one man got washed out of Phantom Canyon, and deposited on the Bright Angel Trail, twenty feet above normal BA creek level. He survived, the other two were found twenty and forty miles down the Colorado river, pulverised by stone.
We keep an eye on the sky as we enjoy the first pool, then hike over a rockfall to a second, in the shade and deep enough to enjoy at nearly four feet. After four hours we leave the canyon as we start seeing cloud build up. The ranger knew how to get his point across with that story. Afterwards we head back to the ranch for a bit and play more cribbage before heading to the Colorado river to enjoy its cold water.
The canyon is pretty empty of tourists due to the economy. We both appreciate the solitude rather then the crowds which are usually here. A ringtail cat speaks into our site and nearly is able to get into my open food box, before Kristin spots it and we use my headlamp to get an awesome view of it. We crash early tomorrow we hike north.
August 22
Today isn't a big hiking day, only seven miles, the heat will be intense though. We eat trail food for breakfast over coffee at the ranch, refusing yesterday's cups for free refills. A couple who emigrated years ago from Hungary tell us how awful life was there under communism. The lady said how one day one of her neighbors apartment was boarded up, and the family that lived there was never seen again taken by secret police. They told of of the Hungarian revolution, and how the Russians were beaten. Hungary was free for two months before the Russians tricked the generals and leaders of Hungary to come to treaty talks. There the Hungarian were captured, made to sign documents admitting their sins against Russia, then they were hanged.
We hike up canyon below walls towering thousands of feet above us then head to the pools of Phantom canyon again. We just go to the lowermost one, yet still spend an hour. We wish for clouds bringing shade today, the temperature is already in the nineties and its just before noon. The cool water is hard to leave, We are not in a hurry today, we just want to get out of "The Box."
The box is the lowest four miles of Bright Angel canyon, that become super hot during the hours around noon. The narrow walls of the box are made of dark Vishnu Schist, which absorb heat from the sun and turn this stretch of the canyon into an oven. People die in the box from the heat all the time.
We start heading up canyon dashing between shade spots. Several times we jump in Bright Angel Creek to keep from getting heat exhaustion. The side canyon we are heading up is grand in its own right. The walls of this canyon rise thousands of feet, we are minuscule to the grandiose scale of the canyon.
Heat is getting intense as we near ribbon falls canyon. We plan on stopping in this small oasis five minutes hiking from the North Kaibab trail. It is a relief when we near it. The whole side canyon is in the shade and the high waterfall further serves to cool off the hot desert air. Mint is growing in large clumps along the stream. A maze of trails criss cross each other leading to the base of the falls. The falls themselves are two stages. The first fall crashes into a travertine stalagmite standing thirty feet tall covered in moss that becomes the second waterfall.
We take the small trail up behind the fall and relax for two hours. By the time we make it back to the North Kaibab trail, the canyon has gone into the shade, and we are relieved to be hiking in the cooler air. After a mile we reach Cottonwood Campground and we are able to get my favorite site on the far north end. Higher then the rest of the campground and not surrounded by trees, this site has the best views, it is also more private. In the sun it would be harsh, but its in the shade now and great. From our perch we are able to look up and down Bright Angel Canyon, as well as up Transept canyon which intercepts Bright Angel Canyon across from our site. On the map its easy to see the near ninety degree angle formed by these two canyons. Transept was named for the horizontal part of the cross, the Transept, for which it resembles, on a map.
We cook dinner, then set up camp on top of my tent. We use the tent as a tarp, cowboy camping below the Milky Way, and three thousand foot stone monuments.
August 23
We wake at five thirty today set on starting before Death Clock, the time when the canyon is bathed in sunlight. We cook dinner for breakfast, pack up and hike on making it nearly a mile to the pumphouse before getting into the sun. The pumphouse is home to the guy who maintains the pumps that send water from Roaring Springs to the south rim. One guy raised a family here.
Above the pumphouse the trail turns into Roaring Springs Canyon, the springs being a prominent feature at the mouth of the canyon. Here water plunges two hundred feet from a spring in the Muav to the canyon floor. The trail hugs a cliff in the Redwall and makes its way up canyon.
After topping out of the Redwall, in the Supai formation, we cross a bridge and are on a south facing canyon side. Facing the sun the temperature rises and we are exhausted from the heat by the time we reach water past Supai tunnel. At first the spot runs cool, then becomes hot as it runs and water from pipes hanging down the canyon in the sun comes out.
Even though its hot we get soaked in it and it feels better then being dry in the sun. Two more miles we hike. The altitude and heat takes its toll, but the beauty of the canyon keeps our spirits high as we climb on. Soon we can see across the Colorado Plateau to the San Francisco peaks 80 miles away. Other mountains nearbye are also in view. Above the Coconino sandstone we enter forest and the trail cools off.
Thunder heads are forming overhead, cooling off the land further. It finally feels good out as we get to the rim. A family from Pennsylvania brings us the mile and a half to the lodge, where we get pizza and find our campsite neighbor Tom from the bottom of the canyon. Tom brings us to the campground, and leaves us with a cooler and fire wood.
Our site is perhaps one of the best in the park system. The hikers biker site is not only far enough from the rest of the car campers to be private and quiet, its also right on the rim with broad views of the canyon and Northern Arizona. We are on the edge of Transept canyon and can practically see where we woke up this morning 3000 feet below.
August 24
The campground is quiet this morning and the fire we had is out. Morning over the canyon is awesome, and I wake several times at different stages of sunrise to watch light play tricks in the canyon. We laze around the campground store drink coffee, and enjoy a mellow day. About noon we walk a mile and a half through a cool forest made picturesque by white aspen. A storm is raging over the south rim, a Arizona monsoon. It's nice to watch from twenty miles away.
The lodge has a pasta buffet for lunch and we gorge at the best table in the restaurant with the Bright Angel Canyon leading out below us and sweeping views across the canyon and Arizona. The rest of today is planned to just be mellow.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
Grand Canyon with TJ triple post!
August 16,
The day starts early my phones alarm is going off at 5:00am. I'm in a tent six miles from the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Kim's car, a Saturn, gave no trouble on the dirt road up to the camp site, even though it was disappearing into the forest. TJ and Kim still aren't stirring though, so I give a shout to wake them up at 5:15. No response, so I started the album Born In the USA on my iPod, and began picking. By the time I was done, they were barely up. They need to upgrade their dorm to a cabin tonight, which I see as a unless reason to wait past the cool morning hours to start hiking. I have only ever started before nine in the morning once, so I'm not to worried. It will be incredibly hot though.
We eventually get rolling at 6:30, and eventually make it to the trailhead at nine. The day already feels hot even though its early, and we are at 7000ft. After the first few switchbacks down it feels a little hotter. As we descend, we see at least eight rangers. They do wonders for my anxiety. One ranger.though, I know from parks and rec at NAU. He is doing a preventative rescue job, where he is stationery a thousand feet below the rim, at Cedar Point. He gets to ask everyone if they are all right.
Traveling down the heat increases, and I am traveling faster then TJ and.Kim, and eventually lose them for good In the Muav limestone, below the Redwall limestone, just above the Tonto platform, near the Tipoff I continue down happy for a breeze That's beginning to cool me down. I don't really want to slow down, the temperature is above one hundred now. The thought of relaxing in Bright Angel Creek is forcing me to leave my friends and just hustle down.
When I reach the campground I find a shady spot, then a nice one next to the creek, but its sunny. I choose the shady one, Then go down to the creek to cool down. Bright Angel Creek which runs along the campgrounds two paralel rows of campsite, is instant relief from the oppressive heat. I lay down in the cool water for about an hour before heading back to my campsite. TJ and Kim soon pass, heading to Phantom Ranch for lemonade instead of making the wise choice of hopping in the creek.
I head up to the ranch and convince them to hop in the creek. We head to a deep pool that is regularly maintained by the Phantom Ranch employees, for the employees. Actually its for anyone, as it is built on public land. This pool is several feet deep, and partially in the shade.
After swimming TJ and Kim go to the canteen for dinner, and I head to the campground where I cook dinner and relax by Bright Angel Creek. After dinner I lay down for an hour and a half, or so. I sleep a little, but mostly just watch the sun set reflecting on the cliffs high above me. About eight I head to the Canteen, a small shop and watering hole, where I get a few lemonade, and read a book on Grand Canyon ecology, written for someone who has never studied biology.
Every night I camp at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, I walk out to the Silver Bridge, a 500 foot long suspension bridge over the Colorado river. Here I spend about forty five minutes watching the moonlight illuminating the rocks of the inner Gorge, and the sheer face of Demoray point, four thousand feet above me yet still a thousand feet below the rim.
The Colorado is running as deep as I have ever seen it, there is even whitewater beneath the bridge. The river is thundering loud too, racing by with its extra volume of water. The additional flow is not only due to the monsoon rains which inundate Arizona this time every year, but also due to the increased flow from Glen Canyon dam, ninety six river miles away.
I head back to my camp site and fall to sleep quickly on the picnic table. The tables metal legs allegedly are unreliable by scorpions. The extra elevation probably allows for a better breeze too. Having a flat surface like the table, is much more preferred than the rocky ground in the campground.
August 17,
I wake at seven this morning to a mule train passing by me in an otherwise quiet campground, and fall back asleep. When I awaken, I find the campground to be empty except for one other site. It was only about two thirds full last night, but people were quiet leaving today without waking me.
I don't hustle this morning at all. I'm planning on meeting TJ and his girlfriend Kim to hike up Phantom Canyon today, but don't expect an early start. I dilly dally and eat a nice bowl of grandma, creamy with instant milk. I also move sites to a shadier one. My Droid can't come with on the hike we are planning to do today in a trail less canyon. So I pack this expensive mini computer in the ammo can, provided by the Park Service in each campsite. These cans are there to prevent animals from getting your food. I however wrap my Droid in my jacket then pack it in. Then I wrap the can in my sleeping pad and put it in the shade. I'm worried that the can will get so hot my phone will die.
TJ and Kim are walking to the campground when I start walking up, so we both meet and head back to Phantom Ranch for water. I also get boiling hot coffee to drink on the mile long walk to Phantom Canyon. The walk there is hot, but soon we are directly across Bright Angel Creek from the narrow mouth of the unobtrusive yet two thousand foot deep Phantom Canyon, with its nice warm stream coming out.
Phantom canyon is easy to miss. Most hikers cruise right by it without ever noticing this side canyon to Bright Angel canyon. At the mouth there is just a creek three feet wide emerging from a thicket of tamarisk. Soon though a use path develops, adjacent to Phantom creek. After a quarter of a mile the narrow canyon becomes choked with the debris of a.massive rock slide that deposited gigantic blocks of Vishnu Schist into a dam that formed a cascade of three waterfalls with pools at the base of each one. The lowest one has a waterfall plunging about fifteen feet into a pool created by a concerned recreationist who felt like stacking rocks across the canyon. I add a few more to places that were washed away by recent rains.
After wading a bit.and standing under the waterfall we find a trail through the screen field left by the slide, and climb around the waterfalls. We proceed through a valley that is sometimes choked with tamarisk, other times though we are on an ok trail. Half the time we just walk in the creek.
At one pool were we stop and lean back into water sliding fast, sluice like, along rock, TJ notices worm like larvae attached to his legs. Kim and I have some attached to us too. It seems that they are attached to rock surfaces.where the current is swiftness. We pick off the ones we find, the rest will soon face the harsh reality of the desert. Speaking of which, it is over one hundred degrees in Phantom Canyon. There are spots of decent shade though, this canyon constantly turning. It's meandering path trapped in stone. The high walls frequently provide stretches of shade as it turns.
We stop at many pools and immerse ourselves to stay cool. Some are five or six feet deep at the end where a cascade plummets into them. All are the perfect temperature though and completely refreshing during our midday hike up Phantom Canyon. The size of the walls is amazing. This is just one tiny part of the canyon, yet it is still overwhelming to be a part of. Looking across from the south rim to this little canyon, is difficult, it is barely noticeable, a small part of a truly grand whole.
We spend four hours in Phantom Canyon before returning back to Bright Angel Creek. Truly to short of a time to be there. We head down passing by the "closed for reveg" sign that marks a pool built by Phantom Ranch employees. TJ and Kim go back to their cabin and I head to the campground to cool down and relax in a large pool built by previous campers, of rock, in the Bright Angel Creek in front of my campsite.
A couple of guys from France and I hang out for a bit who are camped adjacent to me, then we go separate ways and I enjoy a pot of Beef Ramen with dehydrated curry until soup, and instant mash potatoes to take up the water. I get really full of this big pot of food. I don't skimp on dinner tonight. Tomorrow I am hiking out, I'm not sure if I am going up to the North rim, or the south. I just know that I want to carry as little as possible for the hike out.
After dinner the sky starts to look ominous. Dark clouds fill the sky and I here thunder. Lightening flashes and I think back to this morning when TJ and I were joking about an old friend of mine who always told the.mule.riders that it looked like rain, even if the weather was clear. My friend said this to degrade the experience of the rider's since they degrade hikers experience by making the trail super dusty, and covered in mule shit. Well now I think it looks like rain. I don't believe that it actually will rain, but I set up my tent anyway.
Afterwards I go meet up with TJ at his cabin, to discuss plans for tomorrow. I am still undecided about going to the north rim or not for a few days. I want to bring Kristin back here, but am worried that she won't want to hike. I destroyed her feet four days ago on a twenty one mile hike.
I am still undecided on weather to hike north or to go south with TJ then grab Kristin, so I tell TJ just to come wake me up in the morning at four when he plans on hiking out. I decide to go to the canteen and do some blogging, then head back to camp early. Tonight is the first night ever that I don't go out to the 500 foot long Silver Bridge before sleep, and I toss and turn for an hour before passing out.
August 18,
Put on a shirt! Richard put on a shirt. Huh? Bright lights. What? Oh yeah, hey TJ. Thanks for waking me up. What time is it? 4:20 No seriously, what time is it? It’s actually 4:20. Really? Yeah. Ok thanks for waking me up. I’ll head up the Bright Angel today. See you in a few hours.
The campground is a live with activity this morning. Everyone is packing up trying to beat the heat. I decide to wake up for good now too, and start packing my things in the dark. I’m hiking by 5:20, and happily get to watch sunrise from the inner canyon while hiking. It really is pleasent down here before sunrise. Soon the heat will force every living creature into it’s den though to wait out the oppressive heat.
Now though it is just quite lovely. I hike strong in the cool, sub ninety degree morning. And catch up to TJ and Kim in the Tapeats sandstone. I was going to take the old route of the Bright Angel Trail up and play a joke on them. Passing them and meeting them at Indian Garden. I saw them just ahead when I came to what I thought was the junction. I was off though, and followed another smaller trail, an animal path which soon fizzeled out into an eroding cliff. So I continued up the real trail. TJ and Kim are moving at a steady pace. Not fast, but just a normal pace for everyone else. TJ is still recovering from last years motorcycle wreck which laid him up in the Mayo Clinic for months. Luckily his helmet saved his life when he went off the road at 85mph.
The day starts getting hot above Indian Garden, the half way point for the climb out. At the Garden, squirrels and ravens team up to tear into any backpacks left unattended for a second. They want our food, bad. We don’t let them though.
Soon the sun is shining on the trail, but occasionally canyon walls provide shade. Even with the heat, it is really easy to completely love this place. I’m looking forward to coming back in a day or too with Kristin. I called her from Indian Garden, and she wants to head back with me. I know she’s gonna like it.
We make it out at one in the afternoon. The highest reaches of the trail are filled with tourists just venturing into the canyon for half mile hikes. Most will have a very difficult time on the climb back out.
We head to the Backcountry office, and I am able to get six nights worth of permits for Kristin and I. Our trip will include two nights at the bottom, Bright Angel Campground, then head north on the North Kaibab seven miles to Cottonwood Campground. After that we will hike another 7.4 miles to the North Rim, where we will stay two nights. After a cool two nights on the North Rim we will hike 14.4 down to Bright Angel Campground again, then hike to the south rim the next day.
We are doing a rim to rim to rim hike. This is one of the iconoclastic hikes of the world, something that people dream of doing. Thanks to the poor state of the world economy, we are able to actually get permits for it. Amazingly, I just walked into the office and got them. Usually you need to make reservations months in advance.
The day starts early my phones alarm is going off at 5:00am. I'm in a tent six miles from the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Kim's car, a Saturn, gave no trouble on the dirt road up to the camp site, even though it was disappearing into the forest. TJ and Kim still aren't stirring though, so I give a shout to wake them up at 5:15. No response, so I started the album Born In the USA on my iPod, and began picking. By the time I was done, they were barely up. They need to upgrade their dorm to a cabin tonight, which I see as a unless reason to wait past the cool morning hours to start hiking. I have only ever started before nine in the morning once, so I'm not to worried. It will be incredibly hot though.
We eventually get rolling at 6:30, and eventually make it to the trailhead at nine. The day already feels hot even though its early, and we are at 7000ft. After the first few switchbacks down it feels a little hotter. As we descend, we see at least eight rangers. They do wonders for my anxiety. One ranger.though, I know from parks and rec at NAU. He is doing a preventative rescue job, where he is stationery a thousand feet below the rim, at Cedar Point. He gets to ask everyone if they are all right.
Traveling down the heat increases, and I am traveling faster then TJ and.Kim, and eventually lose them for good In the Muav limestone, below the Redwall limestone, just above the Tonto platform, near the Tipoff I continue down happy for a breeze That's beginning to cool me down. I don't really want to slow down, the temperature is above one hundred now. The thought of relaxing in Bright Angel Creek is forcing me to leave my friends and just hustle down.
When I reach the campground I find a shady spot, then a nice one next to the creek, but its sunny. I choose the shady one, Then go down to the creek to cool down. Bright Angel Creek which runs along the campgrounds two paralel rows of campsite, is instant relief from the oppressive heat. I lay down in the cool water for about an hour before heading back to my campsite. TJ and Kim soon pass, heading to Phantom Ranch for lemonade instead of making the wise choice of hopping in the creek.
I head up to the ranch and convince them to hop in the creek. We head to a deep pool that is regularly maintained by the Phantom Ranch employees, for the employees. Actually its for anyone, as it is built on public land. This pool is several feet deep, and partially in the shade.
After swimming TJ and Kim go to the canteen for dinner, and I head to the campground where I cook dinner and relax by Bright Angel Creek. After dinner I lay down for an hour and a half, or so. I sleep a little, but mostly just watch the sun set reflecting on the cliffs high above me. About eight I head to the Canteen, a small shop and watering hole, where I get a few lemonade, and read a book on Grand Canyon ecology, written for someone who has never studied biology.
Every night I camp at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, I walk out to the Silver Bridge, a 500 foot long suspension bridge over the Colorado river. Here I spend about forty five minutes watching the moonlight illuminating the rocks of the inner Gorge, and the sheer face of Demoray point, four thousand feet above me yet still a thousand feet below the rim.
The Colorado is running as deep as I have ever seen it, there is even whitewater beneath the bridge. The river is thundering loud too, racing by with its extra volume of water. The additional flow is not only due to the monsoon rains which inundate Arizona this time every year, but also due to the increased flow from Glen Canyon dam, ninety six river miles away.
I head back to my camp site and fall to sleep quickly on the picnic table. The tables metal legs allegedly are unreliable by scorpions. The extra elevation probably allows for a better breeze too. Having a flat surface like the table, is much more preferred than the rocky ground in the campground.
August 17,
I wake at seven this morning to a mule train passing by me in an otherwise quiet campground, and fall back asleep. When I awaken, I find the campground to be empty except for one other site. It was only about two thirds full last night, but people were quiet leaving today without waking me.
I don't hustle this morning at all. I'm planning on meeting TJ and his girlfriend Kim to hike up Phantom Canyon today, but don't expect an early start. I dilly dally and eat a nice bowl of grandma, creamy with instant milk. I also move sites to a shadier one. My Droid can't come with on the hike we are planning to do today in a trail less canyon. So I pack this expensive mini computer in the ammo can, provided by the Park Service in each campsite. These cans are there to prevent animals from getting your food. I however wrap my Droid in my jacket then pack it in. Then I wrap the can in my sleeping pad and put it in the shade. I'm worried that the can will get so hot my phone will die.
TJ and Kim are walking to the campground when I start walking up, so we both meet and head back to Phantom Ranch for water. I also get boiling hot coffee to drink on the mile long walk to Phantom Canyon. The walk there is hot, but soon we are directly across Bright Angel Creek from the narrow mouth of the unobtrusive yet two thousand foot deep Phantom Canyon, with its nice warm stream coming out.
Phantom canyon is easy to miss. Most hikers cruise right by it without ever noticing this side canyon to Bright Angel canyon. At the mouth there is just a creek three feet wide emerging from a thicket of tamarisk. Soon though a use path develops, adjacent to Phantom creek. After a quarter of a mile the narrow canyon becomes choked with the debris of a.massive rock slide that deposited gigantic blocks of Vishnu Schist into a dam that formed a cascade of three waterfalls with pools at the base of each one. The lowest one has a waterfall plunging about fifteen feet into a pool created by a concerned recreationist who felt like stacking rocks across the canyon. I add a few more to places that were washed away by recent rains.
After wading a bit.and standing under the waterfall we find a trail through the screen field left by the slide, and climb around the waterfalls. We proceed through a valley that is sometimes choked with tamarisk, other times though we are on an ok trail. Half the time we just walk in the creek.
At one pool were we stop and lean back into water sliding fast, sluice like, along rock, TJ notices worm like larvae attached to his legs. Kim and I have some attached to us too. It seems that they are attached to rock surfaces.where the current is swiftness. We pick off the ones we find, the rest will soon face the harsh reality of the desert. Speaking of which, it is over one hundred degrees in Phantom Canyon. There are spots of decent shade though, this canyon constantly turning. It's meandering path trapped in stone. The high walls frequently provide stretches of shade as it turns.
We stop at many pools and immerse ourselves to stay cool. Some are five or six feet deep at the end where a cascade plummets into them. All are the perfect temperature though and completely refreshing during our midday hike up Phantom Canyon. The size of the walls is amazing. This is just one tiny part of the canyon, yet it is still overwhelming to be a part of. Looking across from the south rim to this little canyon, is difficult, it is barely noticeable, a small part of a truly grand whole.
We spend four hours in Phantom Canyon before returning back to Bright Angel Creek. Truly to short of a time to be there. We head down passing by the "closed for reveg" sign that marks a pool built by Phantom Ranch employees. TJ and Kim go back to their cabin and I head to the campground to cool down and relax in a large pool built by previous campers, of rock, in the Bright Angel Creek in front of my campsite.
A couple of guys from France and I hang out for a bit who are camped adjacent to me, then we go separate ways and I enjoy a pot of Beef Ramen with dehydrated curry until soup, and instant mash potatoes to take up the water. I get really full of this big pot of food. I don't skimp on dinner tonight. Tomorrow I am hiking out, I'm not sure if I am going up to the North rim, or the south. I just know that I want to carry as little as possible for the hike out.
After dinner the sky starts to look ominous. Dark clouds fill the sky and I here thunder. Lightening flashes and I think back to this morning when TJ and I were joking about an old friend of mine who always told the.mule.riders that it looked like rain, even if the weather was clear. My friend said this to degrade the experience of the rider's since they degrade hikers experience by making the trail super dusty, and covered in mule shit. Well now I think it looks like rain. I don't believe that it actually will rain, but I set up my tent anyway.
Afterwards I go meet up with TJ at his cabin, to discuss plans for tomorrow. I am still undecided about going to the north rim or not for a few days. I want to bring Kristin back here, but am worried that she won't want to hike. I destroyed her feet four days ago on a twenty one mile hike.
I am still undecided on weather to hike north or to go south with TJ then grab Kristin, so I tell TJ just to come wake me up in the morning at four when he plans on hiking out. I decide to go to the canteen and do some blogging, then head back to camp early. Tonight is the first night ever that I don't go out to the 500 foot long Silver Bridge before sleep, and I toss and turn for an hour before passing out.
August 18,
Put on a shirt! Richard put on a shirt. Huh? Bright lights. What? Oh yeah, hey TJ. Thanks for waking me up. What time is it? 4:20 No seriously, what time is it? It’s actually 4:20. Really? Yeah. Ok thanks for waking me up. I’ll head up the Bright Angel today. See you in a few hours.
The campground is a live with activity this morning. Everyone is packing up trying to beat the heat. I decide to wake up for good now too, and start packing my things in the dark. I’m hiking by 5:20, and happily get to watch sunrise from the inner canyon while hiking. It really is pleasent down here before sunrise. Soon the heat will force every living creature into it’s den though to wait out the oppressive heat.
Now though it is just quite lovely. I hike strong in the cool, sub ninety degree morning. And catch up to TJ and Kim in the Tapeats sandstone. I was going to take the old route of the Bright Angel Trail up and play a joke on them. Passing them and meeting them at Indian Garden. I saw them just ahead when I came to what I thought was the junction. I was off though, and followed another smaller trail, an animal path which soon fizzeled out into an eroding cliff. So I continued up the real trail. TJ and Kim are moving at a steady pace. Not fast, but just a normal pace for everyone else. TJ is still recovering from last years motorcycle wreck which laid him up in the Mayo Clinic for months. Luckily his helmet saved his life when he went off the road at 85mph.
The day starts getting hot above Indian Garden, the half way point for the climb out. At the Garden, squirrels and ravens team up to tear into any backpacks left unattended for a second. They want our food, bad. We don’t let them though.
Soon the sun is shining on the trail, but occasionally canyon walls provide shade. Even with the heat, it is really easy to completely love this place. I’m looking forward to coming back in a day or too with Kristin. I called her from Indian Garden, and she wants to head back with me. I know she’s gonna like it.
We make it out at one in the afternoon. The highest reaches of the trail are filled with tourists just venturing into the canyon for half mile hikes. Most will have a very difficult time on the climb back out.
We head to the Backcountry office, and I am able to get six nights worth of permits for Kristin and I. Our trip will include two nights at the bottom, Bright Angel Campground, then head north on the North Kaibab seven miles to Cottonwood Campground. After that we will hike another 7.4 miles to the North Rim, where we will stay two nights. After a cool two nights on the North Rim we will hike 14.4 down to Bright Angel Campground again, then hike to the south rim the next day.
We are doing a rim to rim to rim hike. This is one of the iconoclastic hikes of the world, something that people dream of doing. Thanks to the poor state of the world economy, we are able to actually get permits for it. Amazingly, I just walked into the office and got them. Usually you need to make reservations months in advance.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Heading to the Grand Canyon
I wake this morning to a raven cawing loudly outside my window. Last night I was set on wanting to hike today. My plan was to head into the mountains north of Flagstaff, the dry lake hills, mount Elden, and the San Francisco peak. I also was contemplating a trip to the Museum of Northern Arizona with Kristin. Hiking won though, so I start packing my things for a trip to the hills. Soon my friend TJ gives me a call from Tuba City, Arizona. He is driving out from Minnesota, playing tourist with his girlfriend Kim, on a nine day trip out west.
TJ and Kim are spending two nights at Phantom Ranch, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and they want me to head up from good old Flagstaff and meet them up there. Of course I switch my plans. We decide to just get in touch when we both get up there, there's no need to hurry. They plan on a few stops along the way including the Little Colorado overlook. I understand that they will also need to stop at several other viewpoints in the park, and instead of rushing out to hike, my pace relaxes. I just need to make the back country office for a permit before it closes at five.
Kristin's roommate Chelsea is nice enough to give me a ride to a good spot to hitch hike, and I promise to make up the favor. When I get dropped off at the road to the canyon, the enthusiastic clerk at the convenience store, where I get chapstick, assures me that I will get a ride. His positive attitude lifts my hopes, and I now it will be easy.
True enough as soon as I walk to the road and take out my sign that says "Grand Canyon," a lady with a Grand Canyon employee sticker pulls over and tells me to hop in for the 78 mile ride. The first thing she says is that I am the first white person she has ever picked up. I am really happy for that. I have stood waiting for hours to get a ride to the Grand Canyon. She always only picks up natives I guess. No problem.
I never catch her name, but I get a load of good gossip on people that I know from when I used to work there. I never play into her constant inquires into why one manager got fired, then re-hired at a much lessor job. Funny thing is, I only found out myself from TJ today. I haven't even worked for Xanterra for eight years. I told her just to ask the guy, they see each other every day in the employee dining hall.
The ride up was nice and direct, I even get to hear her gossip about a lady who lived up there for years who after living seventy five years, was murdered by Grand Canyon legend hikers Maverick before he called the rangers, then blew apart his own head across their trailer in Trailer Village on the south rim a few years ago.
Lon Ayers another veteran Grand Canyon hikers, who has been writing me permits at the Backcountry Office, approves my two night stay at Bright Angel campground, while discussing a pioneer in the thought process of Grand Canyon route planning, Harvey Butchart. Nestled along the cool water of the fifteen foot wide and one foot deep, Bright Angel Creek, located adjacent to Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, Bright Angel Campground is usually very hard to get permits for. Perhaps the permit situation is all hype though, as I have always gotten the permits that I request.
TJ, Kim and I meet at the Bright Angel Lodge, and we head out of the park on the Rowe Well road, an old gravel road that leads into neighboring Kaibab national forest. TJ used to live out hear down a seldom maintained road that was disappearing into the forest. Here we set up camp then head back to the Bright Angel to see if TJ can upgrade his Phantom Ranch reservations from a hikers dorm to a cabin. They say to check back in the morning.
We get a few last things from the store, then head back to the forest away from the mayhem of Grand Canyon Village. I cook dinner on my stove, and we all crash early, we have a big day tomorrow into a ridiculously hot hole in the ground.
TJ and Kim are spending two nights at Phantom Ranch, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and they want me to head up from good old Flagstaff and meet them up there. Of course I switch my plans. We decide to just get in touch when we both get up there, there's no need to hurry. They plan on a few stops along the way including the Little Colorado overlook. I understand that they will also need to stop at several other viewpoints in the park, and instead of rushing out to hike, my pace relaxes. I just need to make the back country office for a permit before it closes at five.
Kristin's roommate Chelsea is nice enough to give me a ride to a good spot to hitch hike, and I promise to make up the favor. When I get dropped off at the road to the canyon, the enthusiastic clerk at the convenience store, where I get chapstick, assures me that I will get a ride. His positive attitude lifts my hopes, and I now it will be easy.
True enough as soon as I walk to the road and take out my sign that says "Grand Canyon," a lady with a Grand Canyon employee sticker pulls over and tells me to hop in for the 78 mile ride. The first thing she says is that I am the first white person she has ever picked up. I am really happy for that. I have stood waiting for hours to get a ride to the Grand Canyon. She always only picks up natives I guess. No problem.
I never catch her name, but I get a load of good gossip on people that I know from when I used to work there. I never play into her constant inquires into why one manager got fired, then re-hired at a much lessor job. Funny thing is, I only found out myself from TJ today. I haven't even worked for Xanterra for eight years. I told her just to ask the guy, they see each other every day in the employee dining hall.
The ride up was nice and direct, I even get to hear her gossip about a lady who lived up there for years who after living seventy five years, was murdered by Grand Canyon legend hikers Maverick before he called the rangers, then blew apart his own head across their trailer in Trailer Village on the south rim a few years ago.
Lon Ayers another veteran Grand Canyon hikers, who has been writing me permits at the Backcountry Office, approves my two night stay at Bright Angel campground, while discussing a pioneer in the thought process of Grand Canyon route planning, Harvey Butchart. Nestled along the cool water of the fifteen foot wide and one foot deep, Bright Angel Creek, located adjacent to Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, Bright Angel Campground is usually very hard to get permits for. Perhaps the permit situation is all hype though, as I have always gotten the permits that I request.
TJ, Kim and I meet at the Bright Angel Lodge, and we head out of the park on the Rowe Well road, an old gravel road that leads into neighboring Kaibab national forest. TJ used to live out hear down a seldom maintained road that was disappearing into the forest. Here we set up camp then head back to the Bright Angel to see if TJ can upgrade his Phantom Ranch reservations from a hikers dorm to a cabin. They say to check back in the morning.
We get a few last things from the store, then head back to the forest away from the mayhem of Grand Canyon Village. I cook dinner on my stove, and we all crash early, we have a big day tomorrow into a ridiculously hot hole in the ground.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
21 mile AZT hike and chillin
Yesterday Kristin and I got back from a twenty one mile hike on the Arizona Trail south Flagstaff to Lake Mary rd. We left Thursday at about 1:30 in the afternoon from her house and walked down the Flagstaff urban trail to the junction of the Arizona Trail under I-40. From there we walked past some marshy ponds with grey ducks. The water being from the outlet of Flagstaff’s sewage treatment plant. Completely safe to drink where it comes out of the plant. Though something in it is feeding all the plants and algae that are growing out of it.
From there we climb a small hill into the Coconino National Forest. Last years tree thinning projects in the area have left their impact of bulldozer tracks everywhere and large piles of trees to burn this winter, when the fire danger is lower. Overall though the tree thinning project is good for the forest and the town. If the forest is too dense, fire quickly spreads between the tree tops in a process known as crowning. Otherwise, the fire stays low to the ground, and only the smaller trees will burn. The taller ones have lost their lower branches, a defense against fire using them as a ladder to crown that tree.
We hike on under burdens of packs heavy with four days of food. We are set on getting to AZ 87 and resupplying in Clint’s Well, a small town on the Mogollon Rim. That was our original plan. Unfortunately we soon find that I did not put the sunblock back in Kristin’s pack, and we worry about that.
The trail is beautiful, traveling through a tall forest of Ponderosa Pines on old roads. The traveling is smooth, and we soon reach Fischer Point, where the trail spilts. Fischer Point is a sandstone cliff that looks over Walnut canyon and across the forests that cover most of the surrounded land. We can go south along AZT into a nice canyon, or go north and still be on AZT. Around Flagstaff their is an equestrian route and a people route, which is called the resupply route. The Resupply route goes through the center of Flagstaff, the Equestrian goes around the east side of Flagstaff, right past a Safeway then around the east side of Mt Elden. The two routes then reconnect at Schultz Pass. The Equestrian route is closed by Mt. Elden though do to fire damage from the Schultz fire last year that burnt most of the east side of San Francisco peak.
We take the AZT south leaving Fishcer point, the western terminus of Walnut Canyon National Monument, and head south down Walnut Canyon. Canyon walls tower over us. They are mostly covered by Ponderosa pines and Gamble Oaks, but where there are cliffs, diagonal layers of former sand dunes are easily seen. The lines slant to the left, then five feet up, to the right and vice versa. The lines are the remains of the drifting dunes which covered this area 250,000,000 years ago.
The floor of Walnut Canyon is a pleasant meadow, not unlike meadows in mountain valleys in Colorado, or the Sierra Nevada of California. We only enjoy this canyon for about a mile before the trail splits again. We take a break under a sandstone cliff, in the shade of several Pinus ponderosa. Then take the long but not so steep climb out of Walnut Canyon onto a lava capped plateau. The plateau is forested, but not nearly as dense as before. Mostly the land is a grassland. Flat as a board, with nice views of the San Francisco peaks.
We are runnning a little low on water, not very but we want to hit faucets tomorrow at a campground. A water oppurtunity comes around sunset though as we walk by a USGS observatory complex surrounded by barb wire fences. There is a house with lights on, an observatory with the telescope open and two cars parked. People are there, but neither of us want to yell for water. We kind of have enough, just more is better. There are three lakes coming up too.
Marshall Lake has already proved a bust. There might be water, but the lake bed itself which is almost a mile long is marshy at best. The water would be very hard to access through a half mile of muck and reads. We get to Vail lake after dark and it appears to also have no water. At least none is seen reflecting the nearly full moon. So we hike on, both feeling good and enjoying the cool temp of the night.
We decide to camp under a large ponderosa pine. Over a hundred years of it’s pine cones and needles have covered the lava with a soft duff, and I am able to scratch out a spot for the doghouse. My two person Henry Shires Tarptent. I think of all the happy times I have had with it in the wilderness, over the last two years that I have had it. This Cloudburst is getting a little old though. The zipper is dead, and the fabric is getting a little too stretchy. It is still a fine tent though for two people. I want to ask Henry Shires if he could make one out of Cuben Fiber for me. Though I think the Zpacks Hexamid was the way to go for a one person for sure. I would like to try the two person Zpacks tent. That would be cool. My friend Balls and his daughter Sunshine are using one right now on the Pacific Crest Trail. Sunshine is going to be the youngest person ever to do the PCT. There review of the tent would sell me on it.
We crash out fast after a dinner of two packs of Beef Ramen, with dehydrated Lentil soup added. I cook on my cat can stove, and am proud of how light my cooking system is. My pot, stove, fuel, windscreen and spoon weigh under half a pound. Less when I have less fuel. I also save weight by carrying light food, like Ramen.
Morning arrives with a nice cool dry atmosphere. There is no moisture from dew on the tent, everything else is also dry. Unlike the east coast where the inside of the tent would be beaded with moisture from breathing all night long, here in Arizona that evaporates out. There is also a nice view of the San Francisco peaks. Breakfast is granola with powdered milk. We break camp and restore the site, making it look like no one has been here before, then start walking at 7:30.
Kristin is getting some bad blisters on her feet, but more importantly we have no sunblock, so we decide to hitch back to Flagstaff to get some more, where we cross Lake Mary road, eight miles ahead. We plan on then hiking up Mount Elden and spending a few nights climbing over the San Francisco peaks. The morning is turning hot and sunny. The few clouds that were here when we started walking disappear, and the sun bakes us. Luckily I have my umbrella, and I give it to Kristin to use so she won’t burn her pale skin. There isn’t a lot of shade, but that makes for nice views across the Colorado Plateau. Unlike the Appalachian Trail where hikers are constantly in a long green tunnel, hiking on the Arizona Trail affords the traveller great views.
The quiet is intense out here. There is no noise. The general lack of water on the Colorado Plateau reduces bug populations to near zero, so there isn’t even the occasional whining of insect wings to break the silence. The clicking of grasshoppers is the only noise to be heard, and that only happens occasionally. As we drop of the mesa that we are on, and get to Lake Mary road, we start hearing traffic though.
This is Kristin’s first time hitch hiking, and we are soon picked up by a man who is camping up on the Plateau we just were on. He is heading to a store to get a 65 gallon drum filled up with water, and we happily hop in the back of his truck. It’s cool to see a road biker we jokingly both tried to hitch. We wave as we pass the guy pedaling his bike, and he smiles and waves back. Our ride drops us off at the Lake Mary Market, after we thank him for his kindness we go in and get water, which we are both out of.
After quenching our thirst we walk back out to the road, and the third car pulls over and picks us up. I tell Kristin that she is really good luck to hitch hike with. Without a pretty girl in a bright hiking skirt, I might as well have walked back to Flagstaff. Just by myself it would have taken two hours to get a ride.
Hey You is the trail name of the man who picks us up. He immediately asks us if we are Arizona Trail Hikers, a product of our lighter packs, gaiters, and duct tape on our poles. He knows me and thanks me several times for posting my water updates to the Arizona Trail water report. He did 235 miles of the trail last year, and the updates really helped him out. Some of the entries on the report are over two years old.
Hey You takes us right to Kristin’s apartment, then he continues north. He is on his way to do trail work on the AZT just south of the Grand Canyon. I thank him not only for the ride, but for the effort he is putting in on making the trail better. Hey You also informs us that a aluminum pipe works just as well as an iron rock bar in moving trees that block the trail after he cuts them with his cross cut saw. He says that the strenght of the bar is in the outside circumference, and that a solid rock bar adds extra weight to a trail crews load for no reason.
Kristin and I shower up and head downtown. We eat at the Mandarin Garden buffet, the worst Chinese buffet I have been to all summer, and unfortunately the closest to home. Dairy Queen afterwards makes up for the bad Chinese food. Unfortunately though, the Flagstaff Dairy Queen is ridiculously expensive. My large M&M Blizzard is $5.99, and unlike every other DQ that I have ever been to, it only fills the cup, there isn't a three inch mound of goodness sticking out the top.
After DQ we head back to Kristin's house and watch A Haunting In Connecticut with her roommate Joe. It wasn't a very scary movie, but it did make some interesting points about the dead being around us, and people who are near death being able to see them. Kristin's roommate Jeremy came home and then went for a beer run. He came back with a 30 pack of Cuyamaco, and we played beer pong till one in the morning. Fun Times.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
July 16th through July 25th.
Well I missed a few entries there. Basically I made it to Vernon, Nj. mile 1349, an awesome little town with a church hostel that has an awesome stove. While in Vernon, myself and some other hikers spent two afternoons at parties with trail angel Melissa. Melissa is an awesome lady that really cares about the hikers. She has been helping out for at least six years. One day she took us to a friends pool party, the next a small party at a friends house on a lake. Both were very fun, the pool party had a waterslide, which shot you out really fast into the pool. I got some kids to hit it Penguin style, face first on their bellies, and I think I started a new craze in the Neighborhood. The second day, we got to paddleboat around a lake, go to a beach, swim to and jump off a floating peir, all that land stuff, ending with a bonfire, Jersey style.
I decided to call my 1349 mile section of the Appalachian trail good for this summer. I still need to take care of school stuff for the fall semester and find an apartment. Though I was rocking the trail, I believe my overall average is 27.2 miles a day, though its been over a week sine I calculated it. Perhaps its a few tenths more.
Melissa found a ride to Manhattan for the Nashville attorney and Columbia national FredT4, and I with a neighbor who owns a parking garage in the city. Charles cruises us in style in his H3 Hummer down into the madness of NYC. Everything is beautiful down here though. The streets are packed with peipke, a giant three dimensional hive abuzz with activity. Fred is a master of his phones GPS and has Charles drop us in a convenient spot, near a Starbucks. We go in dressed in full thruhiker regalia, backpacks and all. I order coffee, and Fred introduces us to the most beautiful woman I've seen since starting the trail. We chat a few minutes then head to the Vanderbilt YMCA, whose hostel advertises $56 for a double room on hotels.com. Unfortunately we made the mistake of showing up looking like bums. The bum rate is $164 a night. I learned this on the Pacific Crest Trail, always book your rooms from your phone if your going to a non hiker friendly establishment.
We go across the street to chill and listen to a band playing in a small shady park. While there Fred produces some cold cuts and sandwich fixings including a nice block of fancy cheese that a lady at a grocery store in Vernon told him to get. Just what we need, a little food and time to make plans. We decide to walk down Fifth ave to Central Park, and are completely dazed by the scenes of throngs of people and gigantic buildings. We both help each other from getting hit by cars. Neither of us are used to looking before crossing the street.
We cross into Central park by the Plaza hotel, walk a short way in and Fred decides to chill as I wander around the glacier carved bed rock that forms the foundation of the island of Manhattan. Musicians are playing everywhere, kids are playing in water fountains, and everyone is enjoying a beautuful Monday afternoon in the park. Fred talks to a lady and decides we should head to the Village on her advice. We take the subway, and chat the whole time with a beautiful Russian girl who is a student at NYU. Anna is very nice and helps us figure out the New York subway system.
We get off and head to Thompson sp? park, a small park in the Village where I lay down for a while at Fred chats with the locals and uses his Android to plan the evening. One man who has tattoos over every surface visible, including his whole face and is very friendly and helpful with info about the area tells us to go to the White House Hostel. He says to book the room for tomorrow then ask them to change it for tonight, this lowers the rate considerably. I call the lady at the hostel and she confirms this is okay, so I book it online from my phone and she hooks us up.
The hostel is only a half mile away, and we he'd over there before dark. It's in an old loft building, and the rooms are like cubicle built into a much larger room with narrow halls between the rows of rooms. $86 bones is pricey, but split two ways almost makes up for beds two feet apart, and short enough that I can't stretch out without immediately contacting a wall. The location is good though, and it was the cheapest place to stay in the city of New York.
Fred found a band who he has seen before in Nashville and is playing tonight at a country place called the Rodeo bar and grill. He says that they are really good, and it will be good dancing music. I joke it will probably be a gay bar with a name like Rodeo. I eat a great burrito on the walk there, and we soon arrive at the most country looking place ever. Texas flags are on the wall by the stage, and peanut shells are on the floor.
The band turns out to be awesome, and plays mostly original songs. Fred informs me on how to pick a girl to dance with. Among other things, he says that you should ask a girl who seems into the music, bobbing her head or whatever. Also you should obviously ask a pretty girl first, and if she refuses, ask an even prettier one, or you will look like a loser.
The band is good but ends early, at eleven, so we leave and try to find another show. Everything is closing early though. We both expect places to be rocking all night in NYC. Fred finds a jazz club on his Droid, and we walk two miles there. The band is very dry though and expect the audience to be silent when they are playing, so we leave. The doorman suggests a place down the street, and we head in there. The music is techno/ club pop, and the crowd is quite lively with a ton of people dancing around. Everyone says that I look like Forrest Gump, though two gay guys who I think are on some form of party drug say that I look I'm a prophet. It must be the big Old Testament beard.
The girls I'm dancing with don't want to let me leave, but I am beat, and it's six hours past hiker midnight. So we head back to the White House hostel and crash hard.
Morning comes early with other travelers waking up early and showering. I get up and have breakfast at a Subway next door, while Fred sleeps in. We decide to stay another night, and enjoy the city unburdened by our packs. We leave the hostel and hope to hear a live band playing an early show at a club. Our journey around the neighborhood reveals nothing though. The only music we hear is a DJ in a park playing for a party of hospital workers from neighboring Beth Israel. While there we figure out busses to the Staten Island Ferry, which offers nice views of the city, Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island.
Fred likes to talk to pretty ladies, so soon we are both involved in conversation with Gloria, a Manhattaner, who is really nice energetic and informative about the city. She is playing tour guide and aunt today for her niece who just arrived yesterday, visiting from Puerto Rico.
The ferry is like everywhere else in NYC, a complete cross section of every culture represented on the planet. There are people dressed in traditional clothes from their home countries, and travelers from the US on vacation to NYC. A mix of New Workers and Jerseyites are also on board traveling to or from work. We get off then re board as required, then on our ride back Gloria offers to show us around lower Manhattan, and invites us out to dinner.
The statue of liberty look much smaller then I expect it to look. Though It is easy to imagine the relief immigrants felt upon seeing it after a long voyage across the Atlantic. The apprehension they felt must have been overwhelming, when considering starting a new life on a new continent.
We embark the ferry where we started at the port authority terminal, and upon leaving stop to watch break dancers and other street performers hustle the tips from the tourists. Gloria takes us through the narrow canyon of Wall st, past the Bull, and to Ground Zero, former site of the World Trade Center. There is a lot of emotion visible and felt here, and many people are seen holding back tears. We tour the museum, then go to an old church that functioned as a relief center for many rescue workers during the 9/11 tragedy.
Afterwards we take the subway to Union Square and eat at a diner with a man whose a writer for the San Juan Newspaper, and his daughter who befriended Estrella on the plane yesterday. After we go our separate ways, Fred and I see a couple from Portland playing music for change, whom we have seen three times already today all over the city.
That night we head back to the Rodeo bar for another show, then head to the village to find more live music. A photographer we met the precious day tells us to go to NuBlu, a local club. There is no sign for a bar, we here music, but don’t see anything but we are were it’s supposed to be. Then two smokers come and sit on a door step and we see a two inch tall label, NuBlu on the corner of the door. A lively beat is bumping as we walk in, produced by a six Brazilian band jamming out. Fred gets the crowd dancing, excellently swinging beautiful girls around the floor. Both of us enjoy the music and the crowd whose completely energized by the music.
Around 2:30 we leave as the band and crowd also seems to be winding down, and walk the streets of Manhattan back to the White House Hostel.
On Friday July 22nd, I say goodbye to a city whose diversity makes even a dirty thru hiker not feel out of place. I walk past streets lined with Falafel and Gyro stands, street merchants have table full of bedazzled cell phone covers, though not a single one of any kind for an extended battery HTC Thunderbolt. The Avenue of the Americas really is a mix of just about everyone not only in America, but the whole world. People in African Garb walk amongst people in Middle Eastern, people from China, and every other area of the planet.
The Amtrak station is located below Madison Square Garden, and I arrive slightly early enough to watch the video on repeat concerning the police dogs at the train station. It seems that they are all bomb sniffing dogs, that were raised by local prisoners. Both benefit from the play time. The video went on and on showing the dogs finding explosives on both people and in packages. There are active scent and passive scent dogs. The active are led around sniffing packages or people. The idea is to search everything. The passive sniffs the air, and if a trace of explosives wiffs by, the dog follows the scent until it finds the middle age blonde lady who is apparently a suicide bomber.
The train is comfy like most, and I sit next to the window, soon a British traveler sits next to me who is touring the country solo with an Amtrak Ride the Rails card, and a hosteling membership. He is going to spend a couple of nights in Chicago, and then head to Seattle. I am going to see my friend Melanie.
Melanie and I have known each other since eighth grade, and have either been friends or disliked each other for that whole time. She lives out in Des Plaines behind the first McDonalds in an apartment building that her dad owns. I’m arriving early and she doesn't get off work until six in the evening, so I get off the train at Union station and walk around Downtown Chicago. I head to Grant Park now called Millennium Park, the name changed since I lived here. Like the Sears Tower which is now the Willis Tower.
In Millennium Park, there is a orchestra playing in an amphitheater that has room for at least one hundred thousand people to watch. I sit and cook lunch on my cat can stove. People sit around me on the stone steps. I guess that I don’t look too out of place. The sky is clear from the storm that was above when the train got to Chicago, and I decide to walk to Park Ridge to Melanie’s work, Fifteen miles through the city instead of taking the train.
I make my way east through downtown to Milwaukee ave. I take Milwaukee through various neighborhoods, most noticeably my beloved Polish neighborhood. Where every shop has a picture of the pope in the window. Then pass Pulaski ave, passing my dads old warehouse which is now an auto detailing center. Soon a total gangbanger approaches me, and tells me to hold up he needs to talk to me. I tell him Im on the phone and keep on walking past making miles. It’s hard to keep up with a thru hiker, when your walking with your pants down to your knees, so I quickly pass him.
At six corners where Milwaukee, Cicero and Irvington park rd meet, I see a Gyro shop, so I stop for the most delicious lunch that I have had since I left Chicago 13 yrs ago. Filled with goodness I march on down Milwaukee ave. It’s 95 degrees out and I’m really hot and dehydrated. Earlier I filled my water bottles at a fire hydrant. There was a sign on the fire hydrant that read, “Do not drink, Not Potable.” I added a few MSR Sweetwater drops and called it good.
I pass the Chicago Archdiocese kitchen, and take the left onto Northwest highway, which parallels the tracks that would have brought me out to park ridge, if I decided to take the Metra Rail. I cruise past apartment buildings on Northwest highway that begin after a stretch of warehouses, and soon walk through Edison Park, a little bar district. Good to see Master Chung is still here. Im dehydrated and stop at the best named grocery store ever, Happy Foods for a Power Ade.
Soon I enter Park Ridge, and decide to take a break at a small park around a Statue at St. Paul of the Cross Church. I wait a little while relaxing, I got here about forty minutes earlier then Mel got off. I decide to go to the Starbucks where I used to work, and get some coffee. Which is more of a force of habit, I’m already jacked on Caffeine from the Caffeine pills that I take while hiking. Plus the 95 degree temps, don’t really jive with hot java.
Mel works at Lens Crafters in a new shopping center they built in Park Ridge. It’s good to see her again, and she introduces me to all her coworkers. It’s good I don’t wear glasses, but if I did she being a floor manager at Lens Crafters would be a good hook up.
We swing by her parents house to pick up some things she needs, and I say hello, it’s been ten years since I have seen them. They live in a nice place in Park Ridge. Mels place when we pull up is a small apartment building with a party going on in the front yard. All her tenants are immigrants from Latin America, and they have a nice spread of food laid out. They invite us down, but were both kind of beat. After showering though we both go for Mexican food. Then crash out early.
Crazy storms rage all night long, dropping six inches of rain and completely flooding out here neighborhood. When I leave at about noon, the streets are still flooded and I have to walk shoes in hand. I head to the train station to go downtown Chicago, and am pleased to see a small festival going on. A blues band is playing switching from blues to Sinatra and back. Tonight the band 10,000 Maniacs is headlining the festival.
The Metra to Chicago is an awesome ride. Basically a reverse of my route yesterday. I get off and just wonder around the streets looking for live music. Then head to Grant Park to check out Buckingham fountain on a beautiful sunny day. There are several weddings going on in Grant Park, and plenty of tourists. A soul festival is also starting soon which I plan on checking out, but keep wondering north down Michigan Ave.
The Magnificent mile is quite magnificent. Throngs of people, mostly tourists crowd the street. Chicago is a beautiful city, every building has a unique style and there is a statue on every corner. Even the draw bridges have elaborate scenes sculpted on them two stories high. There is a 25 foot tall statue of Marilyn Monroe in one plaza, which is surrounded by a crowd numbering over a hundred people getting pictures with her. One crazy man is singing to her professing his love.
I decided to call my 1349 mile section of the Appalachian trail good for this summer. I still need to take care of school stuff for the fall semester and find an apartment. Though I was rocking the trail, I believe my overall average is 27.2 miles a day, though its been over a week sine I calculated it. Perhaps its a few tenths more.
Melissa found a ride to Manhattan for the Nashville attorney and Columbia national FredT4, and I with a neighbor who owns a parking garage in the city. Charles cruises us in style in his H3 Hummer down into the madness of NYC. Everything is beautiful down here though. The streets are packed with peipke, a giant three dimensional hive abuzz with activity. Fred is a master of his phones GPS and has Charles drop us in a convenient spot, near a Starbucks. We go in dressed in full thruhiker regalia, backpacks and all. I order coffee, and Fred introduces us to the most beautiful woman I've seen since starting the trail. We chat a few minutes then head to the Vanderbilt YMCA, whose hostel advertises $56 for a double room on hotels.com. Unfortunately we made the mistake of showing up looking like bums. The bum rate is $164 a night. I learned this on the Pacific Crest Trail, always book your rooms from your phone if your going to a non hiker friendly establishment.
We go across the street to chill and listen to a band playing in a small shady park. While there Fred produces some cold cuts and sandwich fixings including a nice block of fancy cheese that a lady at a grocery store in Vernon told him to get. Just what we need, a little food and time to make plans. We decide to walk down Fifth ave to Central Park, and are completely dazed by the scenes of throngs of people and gigantic buildings. We both help each other from getting hit by cars. Neither of us are used to looking before crossing the street.
We cross into Central park by the Plaza hotel, walk a short way in and Fred decides to chill as I wander around the glacier carved bed rock that forms the foundation of the island of Manhattan. Musicians are playing everywhere, kids are playing in water fountains, and everyone is enjoying a beautuful Monday afternoon in the park. Fred talks to a lady and decides we should head to the Village on her advice. We take the subway, and chat the whole time with a beautiful Russian girl who is a student at NYU. Anna is very nice and helps us figure out the New York subway system.
We get off and head to Thompson sp? park, a small park in the Village where I lay down for a while at Fred chats with the locals and uses his Android to plan the evening. One man who has tattoos over every surface visible, including his whole face and is very friendly and helpful with info about the area tells us to go to the White House Hostel. He says to book the room for tomorrow then ask them to change it for tonight, this lowers the rate considerably. I call the lady at the hostel and she confirms this is okay, so I book it online from my phone and she hooks us up.
The hostel is only a half mile away, and we he'd over there before dark. It's in an old loft building, and the rooms are like cubicle built into a much larger room with narrow halls between the rows of rooms. $86 bones is pricey, but split two ways almost makes up for beds two feet apart, and short enough that I can't stretch out without immediately contacting a wall. The location is good though, and it was the cheapest place to stay in the city of New York.
Fred found a band who he has seen before in Nashville and is playing tonight at a country place called the Rodeo bar and grill. He says that they are really good, and it will be good dancing music. I joke it will probably be a gay bar with a name like Rodeo. I eat a great burrito on the walk there, and we soon arrive at the most country looking place ever. Texas flags are on the wall by the stage, and peanut shells are on the floor.
The band turns out to be awesome, and plays mostly original songs. Fred informs me on how to pick a girl to dance with. Among other things, he says that you should ask a girl who seems into the music, bobbing her head or whatever. Also you should obviously ask a pretty girl first, and if she refuses, ask an even prettier one, or you will look like a loser.
The band is good but ends early, at eleven, so we leave and try to find another show. Everything is closing early though. We both expect places to be rocking all night in NYC. Fred finds a jazz club on his Droid, and we walk two miles there. The band is very dry though and expect the audience to be silent when they are playing, so we leave. The doorman suggests a place down the street, and we head in there. The music is techno/ club pop, and the crowd is quite lively with a ton of people dancing around. Everyone says that I look like Forrest Gump, though two gay guys who I think are on some form of party drug say that I look I'm a prophet. It must be the big Old Testament beard.
The girls I'm dancing with don't want to let me leave, but I am beat, and it's six hours past hiker midnight. So we head back to the White House hostel and crash hard.
Morning comes early with other travelers waking up early and showering. I get up and have breakfast at a Subway next door, while Fred sleeps in. We decide to stay another night, and enjoy the city unburdened by our packs. We leave the hostel and hope to hear a live band playing an early show at a club. Our journey around the neighborhood reveals nothing though. The only music we hear is a DJ in a park playing for a party of hospital workers from neighboring Beth Israel. While there we figure out busses to the Staten Island Ferry, which offers nice views of the city, Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island.
Fred likes to talk to pretty ladies, so soon we are both involved in conversation with Gloria, a Manhattaner, who is really nice energetic and informative about the city. She is playing tour guide and aunt today for her niece who just arrived yesterday, visiting from Puerto Rico.
The ferry is like everywhere else in NYC, a complete cross section of every culture represented on the planet. There are people dressed in traditional clothes from their home countries, and travelers from the US on vacation to NYC. A mix of New Workers and Jerseyites are also on board traveling to or from work. We get off then re board as required, then on our ride back Gloria offers to show us around lower Manhattan, and invites us out to dinner.
The statue of liberty look much smaller then I expect it to look. Though It is easy to imagine the relief immigrants felt upon seeing it after a long voyage across the Atlantic. The apprehension they felt must have been overwhelming, when considering starting a new life on a new continent.
We embark the ferry where we started at the port authority terminal, and upon leaving stop to watch break dancers and other street performers hustle the tips from the tourists. Gloria takes us through the narrow canyon of Wall st, past the Bull, and to Ground Zero, former site of the World Trade Center. There is a lot of emotion visible and felt here, and many people are seen holding back tears. We tour the museum, then go to an old church that functioned as a relief center for many rescue workers during the 9/11 tragedy.
Afterwards we take the subway to Union Square and eat at a diner with a man whose a writer for the San Juan Newspaper, and his daughter who befriended Estrella on the plane yesterday. After we go our separate ways, Fred and I see a couple from Portland playing music for change, whom we have seen three times already today all over the city.
That night we head back to the Rodeo bar for another show, then head to the village to find more live music. A photographer we met the precious day tells us to go to NuBlu, a local club. There is no sign for a bar, we here music, but don’t see anything but we are were it’s supposed to be. Then two smokers come and sit on a door step and we see a two inch tall label, NuBlu on the corner of the door. A lively beat is bumping as we walk in, produced by a six Brazilian band jamming out. Fred gets the crowd dancing, excellently swinging beautiful girls around the floor. Both of us enjoy the music and the crowd whose completely energized by the music.
Around 2:30 we leave as the band and crowd also seems to be winding down, and walk the streets of Manhattan back to the White House Hostel.
On Friday July 22nd, I say goodbye to a city whose diversity makes even a dirty thru hiker not feel out of place. I walk past streets lined with Falafel and Gyro stands, street merchants have table full of bedazzled cell phone covers, though not a single one of any kind for an extended battery HTC Thunderbolt. The Avenue of the Americas really is a mix of just about everyone not only in America, but the whole world. People in African Garb walk amongst people in Middle Eastern, people from China, and every other area of the planet.
The Amtrak station is located below Madison Square Garden, and I arrive slightly early enough to watch the video on repeat concerning the police dogs at the train station. It seems that they are all bomb sniffing dogs, that were raised by local prisoners. Both benefit from the play time. The video went on and on showing the dogs finding explosives on both people and in packages. There are active scent and passive scent dogs. The active are led around sniffing packages or people. The idea is to search everything. The passive sniffs the air, and if a trace of explosives wiffs by, the dog follows the scent until it finds the middle age blonde lady who is apparently a suicide bomber.
The train is comfy like most, and I sit next to the window, soon a British traveler sits next to me who is touring the country solo with an Amtrak Ride the Rails card, and a hosteling membership. He is going to spend a couple of nights in Chicago, and then head to Seattle. I am going to see my friend Melanie.
Melanie and I have known each other since eighth grade, and have either been friends or disliked each other for that whole time. She lives out in Des Plaines behind the first McDonalds in an apartment building that her dad owns. I’m arriving early and she doesn't get off work until six in the evening, so I get off the train at Union station and walk around Downtown Chicago. I head to Grant Park now called Millennium Park, the name changed since I lived here. Like the Sears Tower which is now the Willis Tower.
In Millennium Park, there is a orchestra playing in an amphitheater that has room for at least one hundred thousand people to watch. I sit and cook lunch on my cat can stove. People sit around me on the stone steps. I guess that I don’t look too out of place. The sky is clear from the storm that was above when the train got to Chicago, and I decide to walk to Park Ridge to Melanie’s work, Fifteen miles through the city instead of taking the train.
I make my way east through downtown to Milwaukee ave. I take Milwaukee through various neighborhoods, most noticeably my beloved Polish neighborhood. Where every shop has a picture of the pope in the window. Then pass Pulaski ave, passing my dads old warehouse which is now an auto detailing center. Soon a total gangbanger approaches me, and tells me to hold up he needs to talk to me. I tell him Im on the phone and keep on walking past making miles. It’s hard to keep up with a thru hiker, when your walking with your pants down to your knees, so I quickly pass him.
At six corners where Milwaukee, Cicero and Irvington park rd meet, I see a Gyro shop, so I stop for the most delicious lunch that I have had since I left Chicago 13 yrs ago. Filled with goodness I march on down Milwaukee ave. It’s 95 degrees out and I’m really hot and dehydrated. Earlier I filled my water bottles at a fire hydrant. There was a sign on the fire hydrant that read, “Do not drink, Not Potable.” I added a few MSR Sweetwater drops and called it good.
I pass the Chicago Archdiocese kitchen, and take the left onto Northwest highway, which parallels the tracks that would have brought me out to park ridge, if I decided to take the Metra Rail. I cruise past apartment buildings on Northwest highway that begin after a stretch of warehouses, and soon walk through Edison Park, a little bar district. Good to see Master Chung is still here. Im dehydrated and stop at the best named grocery store ever, Happy Foods for a Power Ade.
Soon I enter Park Ridge, and decide to take a break at a small park around a Statue at St. Paul of the Cross Church. I wait a little while relaxing, I got here about forty minutes earlier then Mel got off. I decide to go to the Starbucks where I used to work, and get some coffee. Which is more of a force of habit, I’m already jacked on Caffeine from the Caffeine pills that I take while hiking. Plus the 95 degree temps, don’t really jive with hot java.
Mel works at Lens Crafters in a new shopping center they built in Park Ridge. It’s good to see her again, and she introduces me to all her coworkers. It’s good I don’t wear glasses, but if I did she being a floor manager at Lens Crafters would be a good hook up.
We swing by her parents house to pick up some things she needs, and I say hello, it’s been ten years since I have seen them. They live in a nice place in Park Ridge. Mels place when we pull up is a small apartment building with a party going on in the front yard. All her tenants are immigrants from Latin America, and they have a nice spread of food laid out. They invite us down, but were both kind of beat. After showering though we both go for Mexican food. Then crash out early.
Crazy storms rage all night long, dropping six inches of rain and completely flooding out here neighborhood. When I leave at about noon, the streets are still flooded and I have to walk shoes in hand. I head to the train station to go downtown Chicago, and am pleased to see a small festival going on. A blues band is playing switching from blues to Sinatra and back. Tonight the band 10,000 Maniacs is headlining the festival.
The Metra to Chicago is an awesome ride. Basically a reverse of my route yesterday. I get off and just wonder around the streets looking for live music. Then head to Grant Park to check out Buckingham fountain on a beautiful sunny day. There are several weddings going on in Grant Park, and plenty of tourists. A soul festival is also starting soon which I plan on checking out, but keep wondering north down Michigan Ave.
The Magnificent mile is quite magnificent. Throngs of people, mostly tourists crowd the street. Chicago is a beautiful city, every building has a unique style and there is a statue on every corner. Even the draw bridges have elaborate scenes sculpted on them two stories high. There is a 25 foot tall statue of Marilyn Monroe in one plaza, which is surrounded by a crowd numbering over a hundred people getting pictures with her. One crazy man is singing to her professing his love.
Aug 10
The crazy man professing his love for Marion Monroe was not that different from the crowd of a hundred tourists gathered at its base taking pictures with this giant statue sculptured to immortalize the classic shot of Marion with her skirt blowing up. of course I got my pic with her too, and returned the favor for other tourists.
The magnificent mile and hiking around Chicago in general is a pleasant change from the long green tunnel, the Appalachian Trail. the water tower place is coming up after I pass the Tribune building, aka the Wrigley building. Wrigley's owned the Chicago Tribune, WGN, los Cubs, and the gum company. The building says Chicago Tribune on it. The Wrigley building is a beautiful structure. A tall white building built on the curve of the Chicago River. It is one of Chicago's iconoclastic skyscrapers that every tourist will get a photo of.
Hiking with my backpack down Michigan avenue, is not the same as walking down street in Manhattan. In Manhattan I felt Luke I just melted into the mix of every other unique individual. In Chicago, where at least in downtown, people look and dress more high end American. I definitely felt a little under dressed in my stained Team Mexico futbol jersey, and ragged hiking shorts. Maybe the fact that I had a boutique ass backpack with a go-lite umbrella kept the foreign tourist from feeling comfortable talking to me.
The Water Tower Place was the only building to survive the Chicago fire on 1872. Mrs. O'Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern, and started a fire that spread amongst the wooden building's. Eventually burning the whole city, save the limestone block constructed Water Tower building. Besides the story behind it, the Water Tower is itself a beautifully sculptured building. It has flair.
One Water Tower Place is the mall next door attached to the Chicago Ritz Carlton. Security five me a few stares, but I walk by intent on not getting thrown out of the building before I get a chance to use the restroom. Giant jelly fish hang in a large multi story foyer advertising a new exhibit at the Shedd Aquarium. Theres a lego museum, which I fail to go to. A store I do go to is a hat shop, but I couldn't bring myself to spend $35 on a ball cap.
Making it out of the Water Tower I continue north along the Magnificent Mile, Michigan ave. I pass the John Hancock building the second tallest building in Chicago, and home to the worlds fastest elevator. I pass this popular tourist destination, then the Drake Hotel. I decide to cross under Lake Shore Drive and take a swim at the Oak St beach, where people are enjoying the Sunday afternoon along the Lakefront. Beach Volleyball nets are set up and each one is occupied with a players.
I am sticky and feeling overheated walking in 95 degree weather and relish the thought of jumping in Lake Michigan and swimming about. As I'm kicking off my shoes, a lifeguard walks up to me and informs me that the water is closed due to E. colli, a product of the massive storm flushing out the city last night. This is a bummer, but I really don't want to go in now. Just off shore people are playing on wave runners though, and it looks like as nice a day as you can find on a beach any where in the world.
Not being able to jump in I walk north along the Lake Shore bike path that continues twenty miles north along Lake Michigan's shore line. This brings me to one of my favorite views in Chicago, where the shore forms a slight concave curve inland. Lake Michigan comes into the foreground with Oak st beach behind the lake, and the hundred story tall John Hancock building surrounded by lessor skyscrapers towering over the sand.
I take a long break in the shade, then decide to head back south. I walk along the sand just above the breaking waves. Then sit outside a backside restaurant and give Mel a call. She's babysitter on the north side till 11pm or so, then needs to drop me at the airport for my 6am flight. I plan to sleep on the airport floor. I decide to catch the 8:30 train, in order to catch the free 10,000 Maniac show by Melanie's house in Des Planes at 9:30. That's over two miles away in forty five minutes. I hustle a short ways back down Michigan avenue, then take a right along the Chicago river at Dearborn, and follow that to the station. The walk is lined with more architectural marvels, and I struggle not to gawk at the scenery.
I make it to the station with time to spare and hit the Arby's in the food court. Interestingly half the people in the train station food court are Brits wearing futbol jersies. The trains upper deck was built for me, and I enjoy the sunset as the train is heading toward Des Plaines.
People are starting to put chairs up in front of the stage for the 10,000 Maniacs, and I go sit on the pavement five feet from center stage. As the show starts I stand up and get into the beat. I have never listened to them before, but these guys put on an awesome live show. I dance around like crazy and get interviewed for the local newspaper. Then a man asks me to dance with his 86 year old mother. We both have an awesome time.
I get back to Melanie's which I wasn't expecting to show up at again today. My original plan was to stay downtown really late, then take the train to the airport at 3am. I'm so sweaty that I can wring water out of my shirt. I decided to take a shower and wash my clothes in the sink which will be a relief to the passengers around me on the plane in a few hours.
Mel drops me at O'hare but the ticket counters and security line is closed till 4 am so I decide to get some sleep and manage to stay asleep for three hours before some workers opening a kiosk I'm sleeping behind wake me up, as their setting up. It's 4am anyway and the ticket kiosks and security lines are open now. A huge line has already formed to check luggage, good thing I only have a carry on, I mailed my poles home from New Jersey.
The Field museum has a Brachiosaur skeleton on display in the terminal which I get to walk under after getting irradiated by the TSA. I try to get a later flight volunteering to give up my seat on the overlooked flight that I'm on, but some passengers fail to show, and I don't luck out with the $400 airline voucher United gives volunteers.
Soon I land in Denver after sleeping a little on the flight, hit the Starbucks then fly over snowy mountains to Tucson, Arizona where I will stay for about two weeks before moving to Flagstaff, Az. to start school this fall.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Bastille day, double post.
July 13, 2011
Start: 1298.9 Rattlesnake Spring
End: 1316.7 Gren Anderson shelter.
Total: 17.8 miles.
Today I wake up to see sunny skys quickly turning gray. My phone says that its sunny though and I choose to believe it. I meet to photographers shooting Rhododendrens when I exit camp, and I'm surprised that I didn't hear them, they said they were already shooting for an hour, one hundred yards from my tent.
Today is cruising terrain again, but the rocky tread is killing my feet through my worn shoes. I'm getting a new pair tomorrow though. It will be like Christmas, new shoes, insoles, and gaiters. Just thirty nine more miles. Until then though I must keep wincing on the jagged rocks.
Trail magic comes in the form of a cooler full of Pepsi. I'm not that into soda, and though I appreciate a free pop, I don't think these people get what hikers really want. Super sweet pop isn't really desired. Hikers really want cold beer. The carbohydrates, in beer really help.
I'm not planning to go off trail today, but there is a fishing community surrounded by lakes, that the trail passes through. The closest business, right next to the trail, Joe to Go allegedly doesn't treat hikers great according to Awol's book. They're closed, but at first glance they look friendly. There are scenes of backpackers painted on the window. A sign by the door though shows them to be jerks, "Hikers park your gear and rear on bench on the side." Great if you go to they're business, they want your money so little that they make you sit outside around back in direct sun on a crappy bench. Not a nice place. I decide to get food at the next business that's open, Gyp's Tavern, named after the Gypper, Babe Ruth. They have plenty of pictures of him in the place, along with hundreds of police patches. The big draw is the cheap fried food menu, which I go to town on. I order Freedom Fries (so 2003), pierogies, mozzarella sticks, jalepeno poppers, a cheeseburger, and a second order of freedom fries. I wash it down with a Yuengling, and then wait out a monsoon on the back covered deck by a huge lake.
After heading back a hundred yards to the trail, I run into Charter. Charter, like most Appalachian trail hikers is someone I'm only meeting once. He's coming back from the Blue Ribbon restaurant where they make hikers eat outside. I say I hope you didn't tip them then, he didn't. Charter and I hang out for an hour, and he relates to me how awful Lyme disease is. He's got it and it sucks. Charter says his lymphnodes in his neck and armpits swelled up like golf balls, and he kept falling asleep. Besides that his joints hurt so bad, his doctor prescribed Vicadin for the pain. Doxicyclene was the antibiotic.
My mileage shot for the day, I continue to the next water, which is nearbye at a shelter. There's too many bugs, so I tent, safe from the mosquito behind mesh. I can't wait to get my presents tomorrow.
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July 14, 2011
Start: 1316.7 Gren Anderson Shelter in tent.
End: 1342.1 Pochuck mtn shelter.
Total: 25.4 miles
Today I wake up early with one thought on my mind, run post office run. I'm pounding trail by 7:15, I need to hit the Unionville, Ny. post office by five. Only nineteen miles away, but I have no clue if the trail will be rocky, or cruising so I just start early and go fast all day.
Two and a half miles after I start walking on this cool, crisp morning, I come across an awesome ramada at the top of a mountain. This would be the perfect spot to camp. The cool breeze would have kept the mosquitos at bay. There is plenty of graffiti, but it is all peace signs, rainbows, "You are beautiful!", and praises of how hot Justin Beiber is. Apparently some 13 year old girls found some paint, and also were motivated to hike. What nice pleasant Beiberfitti. Such a change from the usual statements proclaiming the need to smoke weed, or the promotion of hate. A lady comes by with a nice Corgy and we chat a few minutes.
Run town run is on though and I fly down the trail. At the Mashipacong shelter a trail angel has left three, five gallon cubes of water, and I grab the last liter after dumping the liter I got and didn't touch at a dank stream flowing from a swamp. The dumped water was the color of very dark tea, or maybe weak coffee.
I get to High Point State Park much earlier then I expect, and take a break in the shade. The water fountain was a treat. After leaving, I come to a observation platform that is apparently modeled after a gallows, and I can't get Robert Plant out of my head. From it I see the 220 foot tall obelisk atop the highest point in New Jersey, a 1700 foot ridge. You know a mountain isn't that impressive, when you need to build a 1/2 size Washington monument on top to get people to notice.
I rush on over wet trail. A elevated stretch on wooden planks lasts at least a block. Then I cross several glacial morraines. I finally get to Lott road at three in the afternoon. Marking a very fast morning, 20.1 miles by three is a personal record. My package is there, my shoes, gaiters, and insoles. The gaiters from Dirty Girl Gaiters are pretty awesome, bright tye-dyed, with peace signs on them. Not only do they look really cool, they will keep rocks and forest debris out of my shoes while hiking. A twenty dollar bill in the box convinces me to eat pizza across the street at Annabelles. Like every business run and staffed by our neighbors to the south, the service and food quality were absolutely excellent. I ate half my large sausage pie, the other half went in a box that I carried back to the trail.
I'm waiting for crazy glue to dry on my shoes, where I affixed the Telco strip that will hold my gaiters on my shoes, so I head across the street to the small park. This park, according to Awol, is open for hikers to camp there is even a port-a-pottie. A new board on the sign with all the parks rules and regs states though, "Absolutely no camping in the park." Some hiker must have got caught being bad.
I cross back to New Jersey as I head back to the trail, and soon am walking down the Appalachian trail, pizza box in hand. Thor a ridgerunner that I meet, tells me about his job for the ATC. He gets nine bucks an hour, forty hours a week to hike around and ask people how there doing, and report trail conditions. He says he doesn't have to pay rent either, on his days off the ATC supplies him with a old FEMA trailer left over from Hurricane Katrina.
The AT turns to a paved road for a while then goes nearly all the way around a large man-made swamp, the Wallkill Preserve which is a avian sanctuary. Large Herons scatter as I walk around this mile long mosquito pit. A doe with two spotted fawns also run into the woods, scared by me from drinking the bog water.
The trail climbs from the swamp lowlands, and a side trail leads me to water from a spigot at a abandoned house. I climb higher to another side trail, this one leading to Pochuck mountain shelter. There's a nice campsite at the trail junction, so I take it. There may be people at the shelter, as I here a dog barking. Though more then likely it is empty as there isn't a water source here.
I'm very thankful for the nice cool breeze this evening.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
It's a Jersey thing.
uly 12, 2011
Start: 1271.2 Penguin camp
End: 1298.9 Rattlesnake spring.
Total: 27.7 miles
I'm surprised to see a hiker a 6:15am. Then two more while I'm packing. The AT is getting user as I advance into the herd. Today is cruising, level terrain. There are rocky stretches, but I got over them. There is an on trail town today, Delaware Water Gap. I'm cutting across a corner of it. There is no fast food in view, so I continue through.
The highlight is when Guino crosses the Delaware river, and exits Pennsylvania. Welcome to New Jersey, I think your going to like it. I get water at the visitor center, and chat with the interpretive staff. There really nice.
After climbing a thousand feet from my I-80 crossing, I arrive at the beautiful Sunfish pond. A sign claims this glacial lake, to be one of New Jersey's seven natural wonders. The water is warm, so I treat it like the Ganges and swim around and bathe in there. Great idea, its been hot, and the water was very refreshing.
Between seven and seven thirty, I see three somewhat small bears. They would still qualify as the largest dog that I have ever seen, but are small for bears. None are very interested in me, they all give me space when I sing some Grateful Dead to them. Funny I didn't yell at these guys, but because of there size in each case, I figured mom might be around and didn't want to sound to angry. Besides everyone likes hearing a little Dead every now and then.
I'm thinking more and more about taking off from the Appalachian trail in New York in 140 miles. I really need to find a place to live for school this fall and don't want to be rushed into anything. Though, I still foresee being able to finish the trail and have three days to rush to class. It would be an insane transition though, from trail directly into school. I would like to have time to decompress from the Appalachian trail, and get into school mode. It requires a completely different thought process from that of rouge hiker. I have been thinking about it for a hundred miles now, and still have one hundred forty more to hike, about a week, before I come across a train station that leads into NYC for a twelve dollar fare. This is definitely not a decision that I'm rushing into, I'm putting plenty of thought into trying to decide the right thing to do. If earning another 4.0 this semester is my priority, this would be the best decision. If getting to Katahdin is the priority, then I should continue on the Appalachian trail. That would mean a high anxiety rush to class though, and a week or so where I'm only thinking of sleeping and eating, not studying. Good thing that I work for Starbucks. I would also be left with a beautifully rugged 740 mile section of trail to hike in the future. A section every one tells me will be much slower going, and greatly reduce my mileage. I wish that I had an extra two weeks to complete my hike.
I really need to take more zero days and just sleep. Caffeine pills can only help me stay awake for so long. I really enjoy hiking fast out here though. I don't think that I would enjoy hiking slow and lazy like everyone else is doing. The towns that people keep stopping in for several nights and relaxing, are all just kind of a ripoff though. Unlike the Pacific Crest Trail towns where the locals all seemed like good natured folk who are really into wanting to help hikers get to Canada, out here all the towns people just want to hustle the hikers. There aren't any real trail angels out here either. People lie and call themselves that, but then want to charge you. Hostel employees aren't trail angels, they are in it for the money.
The PCT is a better trail, but everyone has to do the AT at least once.
My eyes are closing as I write this. A sleep deprived hiker.
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