Camp and fast broken, we're back on the trail. Inevitably, the mind dwells on the many differences between hiking here in New York State versus the Niagara Escarpment in Ontario. One very visceral change is the water situation -- lots of very fine creeks and streams for us to drink from, though we still use the filter pump of course.
Sap line limbo!
(Canada's got its share of sugar maples of course, but here our interaction with them is pretty intimate.)
Forecast calls for heavy rain tonight, but luckily there's a cabin right along our route that through-hikers are allowed to use. We arrive in good time, but Deb does not like it!
A cute building, but it doesn't look like hikers have been here for years, and in the meantime it has served as an outhouse to a hundred thousand mice. The floor is millimeters thick with droppings and the air is unbreathably stinky. There's no way to salvage this cabin without a hazmat crew and a pressure washer, so we're just going to have to put up the tent, rain or no.
Meanwhile, the eye is still giving me nasty stabs of pain. There must be a little piece of tree still in there. Deb says it looks like an angry nugget of blood and fire. She feeds me a soothing dose of opioid and convinces me to splash a lot of fresh New York State water in my face. Maybe it's getting better? Heavy rains all night.
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