Day 27: Breaking my distance record

After zeroing for two days at "the Mayor's house," I got back on the trail after breakfast on July 6, and by about 11 p.m. I had broken my distance record, hiking 29 miles [24.7 was previously the farthest I'd gone].

Breakfast was always the same: two sausage patties, a plain omelette, a fried potato pancake and two pieces of toast, with orange juice and coffee. I hiked out at 7:30 a.m. and about 11 miles down the trail, I tore through three scoops of ice cream at a farmer's market and fell asleep on the patio.

I moved to a more comfortable set of wicker furniture down the way when I woke up, and there I took in a mockingbird's performance. A group of hikers who had slept outside the mayor's house in tents the night before showed up and two hours disappeared.

I hiked out at 2:30 p.m. and the first climb took me to the top of the ridge I'd been looking at from the market porch and fearing. At 5, I reached the Wawayanda shelter, the last shelter in Jersey, which is 17 miles from the mayor's house. There were no tent sites and no people, and I felt wired, so I hiked a further 12 miles just for the satisfaction of getting Jersey behind me.

At about the state line I got out my nalgenes and dumped some orange drink into one of them and swirled it around. When I tasted it, I coughed uncontrollably. The other bottle was also contaminated with what must have been chemical residue from the inside of the hose from the mayor's house. I dumped them both out. A few miles on I sat down exhausted, verging on dehydration. I eventually got water from a stream.

It was about 11 p.m. when I got to Wildcat shelter in New York. I found the privy, then the bear box, but never the shelter, despite my headlamp and wandering. So I stashed my food and stuff in the box and crawled inside my tent feeling full of drive.