Miles: 1373.1 | A slow start after a late night turns into a punishingly hot return to trail, marked by heavy sweat, scarce water, leg cramps, and moments of dizziness that force real pauses. Crossing officially into New York brings rocky scrambles and exposed heat with little relief. Ice cream, clean water, and a rare blue-blaze campsite near the Warwick creamery offer salvation at day’s end—along with a quiet reckoning that progress isn’t always measured in miles, but in listening to your body when it says enough.
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.
We did some more technical rock climby bits too.
(Yeah I'm sleeping here ↑)
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
