Heavy rain with thunder and lightning last night. It lit up the sky pretty well. Got up in the dark to get an early start since we had the town stop and those can eat up the day pretty easy.
Walking early on was nice, there was a cool breeze as we walked along the ridge….but that turned to rain and it was fairly chilly.
Most of the walk in the first part of the day was on a ridge, and then a long easy sloping walk into Delaware Water Gap. There was a long bridge crossing the Delaware river. We were walking about 6 feet away from oncoming traffic going about 70mph. We could feel the bridge bounce as trucks with full loads passed.
Crossing the bridge brought us into our 8th state. We also crossed the 900 mile mark in the journey. New Jersey was pretty good. Despite the fact that it began and ended in rain, and had the worst mosquitoes yet, it was really neat to walk for hours on end on the ridges getting views quite regularly. Also it had easy food opportunities during the day.
In Delaware Water Gap we ran into a bunch of other southbound hikers and grabbed a large pizza and garlic knots at the local pizza place. Beardo also got a new pair of shoes…. The town has a church hostel where several other hikers were staying, but we were feeling energetic still and headed up and out of town to the first campsite/shelter, where we hung out with our friends Chillin’, Cocoa Toe Joe, and another southbounder we just met named Kennedy.
Tonight promises to be one of the coldest nights on the trail yet. It was already in the upper 40s at 7pm. Tonight will push the limit of Beardo’s top quilt that he made as we figure the rating is right around 45-50, and we should get temps below that with the wind.
Daily Distance: 16.9
Trip Distance: 898.5
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