Days 135 + 136

Day 135: Mile 1373.1 | Stealth Camp on a Blue Blaze

After our late night, we didn't wake up until 10am. Bryan made us heart shaped pancakes, coffee, and eggs:

We ate breakfast together and he had us back to the trail by noon:

It was a hot day. Our goal was to make it past all of the rest of the roads to Warwick and maybe make a pit stop at the creamery for one last ice cream. It was a hot day. Better than the couple of days we spent in town, but still extremely hot. We were covered in a slick coating of sweat all day. My backpack straps were soaked, my shirt was wet, even my shorts had a huge sweat stain on them. There hadn't been a single water source since we got back on trail and all I had to drink was chlorinated tap water from town. I was so dehydrated that my leg started to cramp. It didn't fade at all that day. It wasn't particularly hard terrain, just ups and downs and rocks. We officially crossed into New York, though:

We did some more technical rock climby bits too:

It was so hot that at one point we were walking across a bald rocky hill top and I told Miles, "I need to sit down right now." I felt light headed and dizzy. About a minute after I sat down I fell right to sleep. Sitting up.

(Yeah I'm sleeping here ^)

We arrived at the creamery around 6pm. Both Miles and I got milkshakes and filled up our waters.  I chugged the good creamery water and used some of it to make dinner while we were there. We watched the sun set and considered walking the quarter mile back to the trail to find a camp spot or maybe to keep hiking. We'd only gone 10 miles. On Guthook I saw a comment pointing out a tent site right near the creamery on a blue blaze that lead back to the AT. Once the sun went down we found it and pitched our tents.

I was cramped up, dehydrated, and hot. I felt guilty for doing so little miles in the past few days, but I had been very productive with blog posts and the air conditioning in town had been so nice. *Sigh* you can't have it both ways and sometimes you just have to accept that.

Day 136: Mile 1377.0 | Fitzgerald Falls Campsite

Still dehydrated, I woke up with a massive headache. My left leg had a charlie horse and I was nauseous. The dehydration had gone from mild to moderate pretty quickly. I packed slowly and got going. We walked up the road back to the trail and started hiking. I tripped and fell twice and my leg was cramping hard. I was grumpy. I couldn't eat my breakfast because I was so nauseous. I sat down and told Miles that I really didn't feel like hiking. He'd been in a good mood, though, and I ruined it. We couldn't stop on the rock face we were sitting on so we kept walking. For me it was more like trudging.

Four miles later we walked up to what was supposed to be a 'water fall'. I'd seen it on the map ahead a few days ago and was looking forward to it, thinking maybe I'd get to soak my feet!

It was virtually dry. It took me two minutes to gather a liter of water. If it was flowing like a true water fall at its fullest potential it would have taking me less than 15 seconds. I sat by the waterfall and called my parents. My dad told me it was definitely dehydration. "Drink water and lay down." He told me. I was nauseous to the point of losing my appetite. Miles didn't wait for me to decide to stop hiking. he went over to the campsites and set up his tent. "If you're this done then I'm done hiking, too." He said defiantly when I lamented that we hadn't gone far enough yet.

I set up my tent next to his and lay down. It felt so good to lay down. But laying down meant I had to sit with my thoughts. It's funny how when you're walking and thinking you usually solve things, thoughts are presented in a better light, trains of thought stay on their tracks better, it's nice; but when you lay down and stop your body sitting with your thoughts can become daunting, depressing, motivation sapping, and generally just bad sometimes.

I lay there and thought about how little progress I'd made. I thought about my future: going back home to live with my parents in their small house, working at Starbucks, the idea of having to deal with other people's negativity possibly affecting me, a career, wondering how to love life when I get home. It was a lot. My visit with my sister had been nice, but it got a lot of gears turning.

I fell asleep somewhere deep in my cloud of thoughts. I didn't solve anything in my mind that day. I drank six liters of water, going back to the 'water fall' twice to gather more. We camped by the waterfall all night.