Day 99, 100, 101, 102: Losing our minds.

99:

We leave Vernon feeling mediocre at best, hyped up on subpar almond milk lattes.

We walk through a few miles of swamp where the trail turns into a boardwalk and I make bad jokes about being on the Jersey Shore boardwalk.

We climb the "Stairway to Heaven", a series of stone steps ascending about a thousand feet. The water sources are total shit this close to NYC/Newark/Civilization, and I can pretty much constantly hear the drone of traffic a short distance away.

The trail is a little rough around the edges and poorly blazed, but the landscape has noticeably improved since crossing into New York (another state down, put it in the books). There's more and more open space, the trees being replaced by massive boulders, and I suddenly feel a lot less claustrophobic.

We find a shitty campsite by a totally dry water source, add electrolytes to hide the taste of the brown water in our smartwater bottles, and pass out to the sound of mosquitoes furiously swarming outside our tents.

100:

Wake up, walk, go to sleep, repeat.

The days begin to blur and I have trouble recalling what happened on what day, then I realize nothing happened.

What happened to the sense of adventure? I think Pennsylvania killed it. And now I fantasize in earnest about getting to Vermont.

101:

We walk by, over, and even through huge boulders. I mean, these are big ass boulders y'all. The trail goes through a crack in such a boulder, "the lemon squeeze", and we take our packs off, throwing them on the ledge above us to retrieve once we're effectively squeezed.

We find a public beach on a lake and like always spend way too much time hanging out there.

It's late when we arrive at our camping destination, but it turns out that Bear Mountain is hugely popular and very civilized, being the closest real mountain to New York City. There's vending machines and a couple hundred people milling about. At 9:00 the park closes and a cop drives around on a loud speaker ushering people out of the park. He does a few rounds looking for stragglers but we avoid notice. He leaves and we lay out tyvek and emergency blankets on concrete, blow up our pads, and stare at the NYC skyline about thirty miles distant. It reminds me of a scene from The Wizard of Oz. The one where they glimpse the Emerald City floating just above the horizon. 

Except our yellow brick road doesn't go to a city. It goes to Katahdin.

I fall asleep listening to a Terry Pratchett audio book, my stomach full of powerade and chips, cursing a culture that doesn't put better vegan options in their vending machines. Very irrational of me, I know, but life on the trail is anything but rational.

102:

We're losing our minds and we know it. 

I watch Stevie eat a somewhat large potato chip and laugh about it for several minutes, my abdominals straining with the workout, knowing that there is nothing funny about the situation, but I am delirious and unable to stop. The trail has made me this way. Or maybe the mosquitoes. Maybe I have lyme and this is a side effect. Who knows, who cares? Not me. I only care about getting to Katahdin.

I received some tinctures from my mom today, and I think I may be able to restore my gut health to normal (finally). If not then having them available to me will at least give me peace of mind seeing as how I don't believe in pharmaceuticals.

Oh, we walked across the Hudson River today and saw a pirate ship.

Yeah. I took pictures. I told y'all already, I'm losing my mind.

I lay in my tent in extreme frustration. It's dark outside. Even though it's only 9:20, it's twenty minutes past "hiker midnight". For some reason, some turds are about ten feet away playing ukeleles and singing their own rendition of Lil Jon's "Get Low" to the tune of Frozen's "Let It Go". Unfortunately I threw my nasty earplugs away about five hundred miles away. I don't think I will get to sleep anytime soon.