Staying on Track Through New York

(Phone Message Transcribed by Bethany)

It’s Wednesday August 1, 2007. Lauren and I are at US 22 in New York, which is where the Metro North tracks cross the trail and lead to NYC. It’s about a 1 hour train ride and originally we were planning on visiting my brother Jonathan, but plans have changed and we feel like we need to stay on the course and stick to the trail.

A couple of days ago we woke up, and we apparently had slept in a deer lay, and due to that mistake we had pin size deer ticks everywhere (shown in the picture above). It took us one full hour to remove 70 embedded ticks, and by the end of the day we had pulled over 100 our of her. I pulled about 50 from me. We were completely grossed out.



I’m okay because I’m already taking the prescribed medication, but we are going to get some Lyme Disease Medication for Lauren in Kent, Connecticut.

As far as the trail in New York goes, I told Lauren that since we hadn’t heard anything about this section of trail going into it, I thought it would be a gentleman’s walk, but that was not the case. We’ve gone through sections called "Agony Grind" and the "Lemon Squeezer." The section south of the Hudson River has been quite grueling.



If you are a fan of Walker Texas Ranger you would be able to relate to my excitement... Yesterday I had the good fortune to hike with Chuck Norris! As I was hiking with him following me all I could think was, "when you’re [on the trail], look behind you because that’s where the Ranger's gonna to be." Anyway, he’s a guy who’s trail name is Chuck Norris, and he looks like him too. That was kind of fun.

We’ll be in Connecticut tonight, and probably hit Kent, Connecticut tomorrow at noon.

That’s it for now. Over and Out.