The New Jersey Wilderness

7/9 Mile 1,283.6-Delaware Water Gap- We walked into town just in time to help some hikers finish up a feast that a local Presbytarian church had prepared. Apparently thay've been doing this for hikers every Thursday of the summer months since the 70's. We have less than 900 miles to go now and our legs are like machines. So for the final stretch of the journey we'll be holding ourselves back just to ensure we don't finish too early and go back to work.

7/10 Mile 1299.-Beautiful Vista-We're tenting on the side of a ridge that should have a nice view for a sunrise. We saw a Rattlesnake today at the Mohican Outdoor Center, and we took a lot of pictures of it from just 5ft away. Then a man who hoped he knew what he was doing tried to capture the small beast with two poles and a bucket in order to relocate it somewhere far from the visitor center. We were told to move somewhere far away so we wouldn't be in danger. 15ft wasn't for enough and we were scolded for not understanding that this might be a danger zone. We thought he might just be nervous with the procedure, since it was his first time, so we moved back to our picnic table and finished our lunch about 75ft from the action. A few minutes later we were told that this was still too close and we needed to go inside until he had caught it. I don't see how it would harm us at that distance, but we decided to just move along and not cause anymore stress for the poor man than he already had.
Speaking of stress, I saw a bear tonight as I was looking for a place to hang the bear bag. Now Yogi knows right where to go for a midnight snack. Not only that, we saw two other bears within 3 miles of our campsite. Not even the scented sunblock is in the tent tonight. Oh yes, almost forgot, we're in New Jersey now.

7/11 Mile 1,314.9-Gren Anderson Shelter-The mosquitos decided to really make their presence known in the last few days. We both look like we have the chicken pox now. Nothing a little 99.8% Deet won't fix.
On a more interesting note, while Ferdy and I were scoping out a spot to set up the tent a man we call Sherpa walked by and said very casually, "hey watch out, there's a bear behind you". Ferdy wasn't about to be fooled and decided just to look at him and smile as if to say, good one man. I did look, and I saw a huge bear only 50ft from where we were standing. Finally, Ferdy read the expression on my face and looked to see the giant waltzing along in our backyard.

-- Post From My iPhone