Greenwood Lake to Buchanan Mountain

Day Eight
Monday, October 3, 2016
Greenwood Lake, NY to Buchanan Mountain

 

We got a pretty late start this morning after leaving the motel at around 8:00.  We stopped at the Quick Mart for breakfast on the recommendation of the lady at Linden Motel. They had a deal of a breakfast roll with egg, meat and cheese and coffee for something like $4.99.  We found as we later walked up the street that there are plenty of places to find breakfast.  We then went to a little market and picked up a few items to take with us on the trail before heading back up the .9 to the trail.  (Add that to our ten miles today.)

 

 

 

 

Before long we reached NY 17A where we were looking forward to eating lunch at Hot Dogs Plus.  Uh oh, Hot Dogs Plus had a sign – it’s closed on Monday.  Just our luck.

  

Hot Dogs Plus, closed on Monday



 

So I sat on their picnic table while Wait-up up trekked down the hill and around the corner to see  if he could fine the Bellvale Creamery.  He soon came back and said he had found it but it didn’t open until 12:00.  Well, it was almost 12 and we decided it was worth the wait, so we both went back the .3 to the Creamery.   They obviously are very popular as cars were already gathering in the parking lot.  They have several picnic tables overlooking a beautiful view beside their building.  We each chose a flavor of ice cream and sat at the picnic tables and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It was one of the few New York stops that we were fortunate enough to hit at the right time.  The New York deli hop was not working for us to well. 

 

It was a fairly easy day with a rock scramble at the Eastern Pinnacles, another at Cat Rocks, then we took the blue blaze around the third one.  Other than that, the path was not too rocky and pretty level.   

Fitzgerald Falls was completely dry.  That’s quite a drought!  There are some very nice stone steps going up the mountain beside the falls. 



Fitzgerald Falls, completely dry. 

We saw a few southbound thru-hikers today. 

We walked until around 5:00 and stealth camped on Buchanan Mountain.

 

Vernon, NJ to Greenwood Lake, NY

Day Seven
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Vernon, NJ to Greenwood Lake, NY
13 miles

Well, the night went pretty well.  We had no bear visitors, our food bag was intact and we slept alright.  We got on the trail about 7:30.  As soon as we stepped back out onto the trail and went forward a couple hundred feet we saw a big white tent off to the side in a clearing.  Uh, we were so close and didn’t know there were other people around.  Don’t know what was going on there.

  

Wawayanda Mountain



Wawayanda Mountain loomed in front of us, really high and really steep.  It was about a mile and a half to the top of it.  We felt like we had really accomplished something when we reached the top. 

It was rainy, cloudy and gloomy all day, knocking out our views.  On top of that, we were warm and sweaty inside out ponchos, especially after tackling that high mountain. 

We reached the New Jersey/New York state line – a simple painted indicator on top of a mountain. We took a picture of our feet, one of us in each state.

Almost as soon as we crossed the state lie the terrain changed from rocky path to huge boulders.  I never saw so many boulders in succession to be scrambled over. 


Prospect Rock

 

We soon reached a notorious point on the trail –Prospect Rock , the highest point in New York . On a clear day, they say you can see the skyline of Manhattan from here.  We didn’t have a clear day – which was our story on most of our days in New York. 

We climbed a ladder made of rungs in the side of a boulder.  That was fun.  Rock scrambles galore!  It wasn’t so hard to do, it was just tiring – all the bending, stretching and reaching made me feel like I was in a bootcamp.     

Wait-up slipped on a wet boulder and fell on his hand again.  Number four!

We saw a sign for a park office, so we went in search of it.  It was .4 down a side trail.  We bought snacks out a box the clerk had, and filled up our water bottles.  I never did know what park it was.  It’s not listed in our Hiker Companion.

The Greenwood Lake Vista Trail is a .9 blue blazed trail leads you right into the village of Greenwood Lake, New York.  We took it.  In addition to the 13 trail miles, the side trip to the park office and this trail, we covered 14.7 miles today. 

It was 6:00 p.m. when we walked into Greenwood Lake, coming out on the trail behind a building that had school buses parked.  We kept walking until we saw someone to ask directions to the main street and kept on walking.  We came out on a corner where Murphy’s Pub was located, went in dirty as we were, and had hamburgers.

We had called ahead and booked a room at the Linden Hotel for the night.  That was after we made numerous phone calls to Anton’s on the Lake.  I actually talked to the fellow there once and he told me he had openings for Sunday night, but when I tried to call back to book it, he never answered the phone again.  We were going to get him to slackpack us and stay with him a couple of days, but I never could get him on the phone again, and he didn’t call me back after I left two phone messages asking him to. 

So we made our way on down the street to Linden Motel after eating.  It was dark by this time.  A police car was parked beside the street and moved down behind us as we walked.  The motel was located off the main street behind  a bank.  It looked like a normal house that we went to and the sign said ring the bell.  A man came to the door and we told him we had called about a room, he said his wife was coming.  She came and led us out the front door, down the street and turned down another driveway to the back of the building.  The motel rooms were underneath the back of the house, with an enclosed walkway running the length of about five or six rooms, which all faced the lake.  We saw the next morning that the view of the lake was beautiful.  I’m sure in its day, the motel was very nice but it is very old and rundown now.  The room we had was adequate with a kitchenette, a couch, and a double bed all in the same room with a shower in the bathroom.  It was $80 cash.  The only real complaint I had was that the bedding smelled sour and I smelled it all night because I did not sleep well.  But Wait-up slept just fine.  (Pictures of Linden Motel on next page.)