Rainy day in NY

What an interesting day on the trail today. About halfway through the
day, we were all huffing and puffing up our second large climb of the
day when we reach the summit of Bear Mountain. It was a lovely
mountain complete with three vending machines on top....two soda
machines and a Pringles machine. Yep, even Pringles got in on the
vending machine business. We realized that instead of enjoying the
nice view from the top of the mountain that we just climbed, we were
all lounged out in the middle of the pavement in front of the vending
machines. (Of course we all went over to the viewpoint and oooohed and
aaaahhed because you could see the New York skyline...sort of.) It
was pretty funny when I looked over and Safari was curled up on the
ground in front of the Pringles machine nursing his fourth Powerade.
Another interesting part of today's journey was the fact that the
trail went right through the middle of the Bear Mountain Zoo. Although
I am not a fan of animals in cages, I still thought it was something
different and entertaining...even in the pouring rain. It was still
pouring when four of us crossed the Bear Mountain bridge over the
Hudson river. That is another very very long bridge. I noticed that it
had signs about how life was worth living with hotline numbers for
help. Needless to say, it was also a very tall bridge.

Speaking of walking along, near, or across the many super busy roads
of the Northeast, we also did the hiker equivalent of "Frogger" on the
Palisades Interstate Parkway this morning. All I can say is running
across a divided highway during the morning rush hour commute will get
your butt moving...fast. If you didn't get my Frogger reference, you
are too young and you missed out on one of Atari's best low-tech video
games ever.

So I am camped in a monastery ballfield at mile marker 1399.7. The
monks are kind enough to let hikers tent in their nice ballfield and
use their water spigot. As nice as it is to have spigots nearly
everywhere on this part of the trail, the water around here tastes
terrible. We all have become water snobs and I am pretty certain that
the water from the springs in Georgia tastes the best.