Unionville to Vernon

Day Six
Saturday, October 1, 2016
Unionville, NY (Lott Road) to Vernon, NJ  (NJ 94)
11.8 miles

Friday afternoon, I started calling around to find someone to take us back to the trailhead.  Our Hiker’s Companion listed a guy named Ron at High Point Country Inn who said his charge would be $30.  I called Port Jervis taxi and when I asked how much, she said she didn’t know for sure but it would be $2 a mile.  When I said how many miles, she said “Google it.”  Ha ha!  So I did, and it was about 9 miles.  I figured it would certainly be less than $30, so I scheduled them to come out on Saturday morning at 7:00 to pick us up.  When it was not there at 7:00, I called again.  The lady said, “You’ve got to give me a minute here, I have to get people to work first.”  Wow!  So in a few minutes the taxi pulled up.  The driver said if I had not called this morning, they would not have sent anyone because the dispatcher thought it was a prank call.  I could tell she was not familiar with the A. T. because both times I called, she said, “You want to go to the Appalachian Trails?”  When he called someone else to find out the charge, she immediately said $25.  He said the first lady should have known that.  So, anyway, it did turn out to be less than $30 that the other guy was going to charge, but not exactly $2 per mile either. 


The first 5.4 miles of the trail were non-rocky going around the Wallkill National Wildlife Preserve then along a nice boardwalk.  Not too bad up to Pochuck Shelter, then after the shelter it is rocky again until county Road 517 where another long .7 of a mile nice boardwalk starts again. 

 

Wallkill National Wildlife Preserve

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 
  


 

 

It rained today and we stayed wet all day in spite of our ponchos.  Wet socks make for miserable feet.  Wait-up slipped on a wet boardwalk and fell for the third time this trip. 

We were looking forward to visiting Heaven Hill Farm in Vernon and maybe trying to stay at the St. Thomas Episcopal Church Hiker Hostel.  Today was supposed to be the last day they took hikers in.  Before we reached the road crossing, we passed two men and a young boy and asked them how far we were from the road where Heaven Hill Farm is. They told us we had missed it, it was behind us!  They talked about the yummy donuts they had purchased there before they started hiking.  Oh my, how disappointing. 

We trudged on down the hill, trying to settle in our mind that we would not be at a hostel tonight and we would not get a treat from Heaven Hills Farm.  Before long, we went through a cow pasture on a boardwalk and saw lots of cars parked up ahead on the road.  We thought there must be some kind of festival going on.  When we reached the road, we looked to the left and we could see Heaven Hill Farm just a little ways down! 

S

Hallelujah!  We had not missed it after all.  We went down to the farm and ordered up some ice cream.  We asked the clerk how far down the road it was to the hostel and she indicated it wasn’t far down, told us that it was illegal to hitchhike but that many hikers did it anyway, and gave us the number for Vernon taxi. 

Back out on the road we stuck out our thumb and were passed up by several cars.  We looked in our book and found out it was 2.4 miles to town.  We then called Vernon taxi and found out he was out of town (just a one person taxi company).  We gave up and trudged on up the hill on the trail planning to set up camp before we climbed the foreboding looking mountain in front of us.  It was Wawayanda Mountain, what the local people call “Stairway to the Stars.” 

Several folks were still coming down from the mountain as we went toward it.  Just as soon as we could, we left the trail and went into a little cedar thicket to set up our tent, unseen from the last few passersby.   We didn’t have a tall tree to hang the bear bag from and if there had been one, he surely could have gotten to our food bag.  It was only just 3:00 p.m., but we were ready to quit for the day.