We got to have another nice big breakfast before heading out today. We both went with the hungry hiker, which was the standard 2 eggs, 2 pancakes, home fries, toast, and choice of meat. The only other people at breakfast this morning were other hikers, it seemed like there were only hikers in town.
Right after breakfast we headed out, and as we crossed the Delaware River, we completed the Pennsylvania portion of the trail and crossed over into New Jersey. The New Jersey section of trail started out pretty nicely, initially with far fewer rocks. However, there were some sections that were reminiscent of Pennsylvania, which got a little annoying. Due to our big breakfast we didn’t stop a whole lot today. We took one break near the road to an outdoor center. We huddled under my poncho for a few minutes as a shower passed by. The only other major break of the day was when we hit the end of some trail magic put on by the Hunterdon, NJ hiking club. That was a really nice surprise. The watermelon was exactly what I needed at that moment and we left feeling quenched. We ran into some rain right at the end of our day. In fact it came down pretty good during the last mile of our hike, so we got pretty damp right at the end of the day. Luckily it didn’t last too long, and we were able to set up and cook dinner without getting all of our stuff wet.
We had a few wildlife encounters today. In both of the ponds that we walked by we saw snakes swimming in the water. We caught a glimpse of at least two other snakes on the side of the trail as well. The more intense encounter was in camp, as we were cooking dinner. We heard some movement in the underbrush about 20 yards away. Sure enough, a huge bear comes waltzing out of the woods. This was easily the biggest one we’ve seen yet on the trail, I’m guessing 400 lbs. He was a big guy. Lucky for us it still seemed to be scared of humans, because it ran off down the hill when we started yelling at it. We’d heard that New Jersey has one of the densest bear populations along the trail, and it seems like that is probably true. Luckily we’ll be out of the state in about 2 more days or so. Here’s hoping we did a good job with our food hang.
