From Kent, CT

Hey all!

It's been a few weeks since I posted last, and not too much has happened. I've finished PA, NJ, and NY on the trail, and passed into CT yesterday. I'm also over 2/3 of the way done with the trail, meaning I have less than 727 miles left to go!!

Since Duncannon/Hershey, the rocks in PA got a lot worse, and the Booty Club took a zero day in Wind Gap, earlier than planned, to give our feet a break. After crossing into NJ at the Delaware Water Gap, the rocks continued, but got to be less jagged and pointed into our feet, and just became bigger and smoother. New Jersey was surprisingly pretty in many places, which is definitely not what I expected.

I left the Booty Club and took two days off in Vernon, NJ, after spending several days hiking with a really low appetite, fatigue, nausea, and extremely low energy. I went to the doctor in Vernon and had blood drawn to perform the test for Lyme disease, which is carried by deer ticks. The thing is, I haven't pulled a tick off myself since Virginia! I also started taking the antibiotics, even though I'm not sure yet if I have Lyme or not.

After leaving Vernon, I crossed into NY and hiked to Harriman, in the middle of a heat wave. I started hiking with a guy named Moses and another guy who's been hiking near us since the beginning, Phishnets. We hiked just under 10 miles in over 7 hours, which is pretty pitiful and was just not worth the trouble to us. We decided to go into town to rest and experience some air conditioning. There we ran into Shotgun and Roadie, and the 5 of us split a hotel room and had dinner at TGIFriday's, which was amazing.

Friday morning, Moses, Shotgun, Roadie, and I took the Metro-north train into NYC, where we spent the day walking around the city finding air conditioning. Moses and I stayed with a childhood friend of his in Brooklyn, and Shotgun and Roadie stayed with their friends in the Bronx. Saturday Moses and I decided we had had enough of the city and took the train out to Wingdale, where we stayed at the Dutchess Motor Inn and ate at Big W's BBQ. Thinking I would be catching up with the Booty Club, we hiked 17 tough miles yesterday, only to find out that they're a day or so behind us! So, we came into Kent this morning for breakfast and to do some errands, and I'll be hiking some shorter days coming up so the Booty Club can catch me!

Sorry about no pictures, but there haven't been a whole lot of picturesque moments the last few weeks, and I don't have my camera with me here at the library. Maybe from Tyringham!