Day 82 Zoo

Today we crossed the Hudson River, hiked through a zoo on trail, and covered almost 28 miles. 


I didn’t sleep very well last night. It was hard getting comfortable and we had a turkey come gobbling within 70 yds for about an hour.  


We hiked over a beautiful ridge for the first 8 miles of the day and crossed the 1,400 mile mark. 





This area of New York had a lot of very strange trail detours that made less sense than the original trail. One detour wanted us to route 2 miles out of the way to avoid crossing a two lane road. In the process we would have missed some great views. Instead we followed the AT as it was in 2023.


There was also a detour around Bear Mountain, which has some of the best views in New York. Technically the Bear Mountain state park was closed, but instead of taking an easy road walk and missing the views we decided to hike through anyway. There were a lot of other people day hiking the trails anyway. And the closure was due to flooding in 2023 that has since been fixed. The hike over Bear Mountain was beautiful and the lookout tower at the top had the best views we’ve seen in a long time.





After Bear Mountain there was a free zoo that the trail goes through. Unfortunately all of the exhibits were empty except for a black bear exhibit. The bears must have had their spring coats on because they looked brown but they are still technically black bears.




Shortly after the zoo we crossed the Hudson River on the Bear Mountain Bridge. The bridge was huge and I don’t love bridges, especially when you need to walk right next to the edge and it’s like 200 feet high. Anyway we made it across. 

 



It’s a crazy feeling having walked basically from Atlanta GA to north of NYC. After the Hudson we hiked 5 steep miles to a deli right on trail called the Appalachian Market. We stopped for dinner and to charge our phones. I had a Rueben sandwich and a huge chicken parm sandwich. Both were great. 



After dinner we hiked 5 miles to a small campsite by a stream. We got here around 8 and were set up and in bed by 8:40. 


The weather continues to look pretty good. Today’s weather was awesome with 75 degrees and sun. Wednesday looks like rain but other than that it should be pretty good.


Goodnight,

Walker 





If you want to follow Tyler or Spencer, here are their logs as well:


Tyler: https://tylerat2024.blogspot.com/?m=1


Spencer: https://www.instagram.com/baxter.bound?utm_source=qr&igsh=MWx4MzRqa3M4dGk3Mw==


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