8/5/1999 ~ Greymoor Friary (4 miles hiked)

Camped out here in the ballfield. IT's 10 p.m., and I must admit that the rowdy hikers are annoying me. 10 sounds early, but out here it's pretty late. They seem to be heading for their tents now. God, I hope so. I'm tired. Did an easy 4 miles here from S. Mtn. Pass Rd., but we didn't start until 6:30, so I'm satisfied with that. I'm supposed to be doing low miles for my ankle, se we might just do 8 tomorrow.

Everyone I know seesm to have come through here around 7/23. I'm not yet sure if that's good or bad. I'm leaning towards bad at the moment. OK. I'm sleepy, and it's quieted down a bit. Except for the extremely loud cricket that's right next to my head. Sigh.

8/6/1999 ~ Campsite on AT, N of Dennytown Rd (8.3 miles hiked)

Hard day today, even at only 8 miles. I can't even believe how much I backslid on trail conditioning in two weeks. The trail here is all PUDS of about 500 ft. It's pretty tiring. We can smell smoke from the forest fires around Bear Mountain. Hell, we can *see* smoke too, and it's kind of scary.

I'm really too tired to say much. More tomorrow.

8/8 ~ Morgan Stewart Shelter (9.2 miles hiked, .8 road walk)

The trail is still kicking my ass. I got here at 3pm, so I could have rested and gone on, but both pairs of my socks were soaked as well as my clothes, so I decided to stay. Besides, I think the next shelter is Telephone Pioneers and it's dry.

If my socks are dry, I'm going to attempt a 16.1 tomorrow. The first shelter (as mentioned) is 7 away and dry, so I'm going for the second. It looks hard on the profile, but that only gives one the gist of the hike, I've found. Long, gentle ascents look easy on profiles, but I find them long and tiring. I now like the straight up ascents because they are over faster. I hate straight down ascents, however, like all long-distance hikers. Very hard on the knees and, if wet, on many other parts of you as well.

I did have a very average Egg Salad sandwich for lunch. That's what the road walk was, and I think the closest town was Stormville. I bought the very last Lipton they had on the shelf. It's rice, which I don't like, but at least it doesn't have chicken of some sort in it.

No matter what, I should be in CT on Tuesday.

Oh yeah - there are seven people here and I'm the only northbounder. That's a first.

8/9 ~ Wiley Shelter (16.1 miles + 1.2 mile road walk)

(All these road walks indicate that I don't hitchhike alone. Since I'm *hiking* alone, however, that means I don't hitch.)

Well, I made the 16 today. My socks were NOT dry this morning, and I paid for that with a hellish blister.

It was a gorgeous day. Sunny, breezy and not hot. The hike wasn't as hard as I expected, but it seemed very LONG. It's always that last mile to the shelter that seems like forever, and yet this shelter just sort of appeared on the trail. You walk right into it on the white blazes and exit behind it. Mashipicong was like this too.

The shelter was old, but much care had been taken with the whole area. There was a tent platform, and the picnic table (often missing, so always welcome) was under a tarp. There were plenty of clotheslines hung, it had a stove/fireplace sort of thing in front of it. (Some shelters have these and some don't. Fires are banned, and I've never seen one lit on the AT. The privy was also quite pleasant.

I hit another deli today and this time I'm not even cooking dinner. It was a much better sandwich. Cheese sandwiches great hiking fuel for me. In any case, I ate around 3pm and though I hiked 8 miles after that, I'm still not hungry.  There was this really weird thing on the trail today: an arch that said "Gate of Heaven". It led to a clearing overgrown with grass which was actually an unmaintained cemetary. At the time I passed it, the town fire siren was going off, and the light was at that very-late-afternoon yellow cast it gets out here. There's a buttery color to everything it touches. In any case, spooky in a good way.