Day Seven
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Vernon, NJ to Greenwood Lake, NY
13 miles
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.)
S
