New York City

This is Luke typing from Bennington, VT, which is a crazy long way from Springer Mountain, GA, but still a long, long way from Mt. Katahdin, ME. We haven’t updated this since the beginning of New York, which is a little over 200 miles ago. It has been a long, hard, and memorable section of the trail. Returning to the trail in New York from Tom and Joyce’s house was an interesting time for us. Throughout this hike, we have usually had a plan to stay with someone down the trail, tell them a date of our estimated arrival that will push us physically, and then work to make that goal. Leaving Tom and Joyce, we found ourselves over 800 miles from our finish line with the only real deadline mid-August to get Caleb back to school, which is a deadline that will not be difficult to make. It was the first time we felt legitimately on our own this whole trip. So, for the first few days back on the trail, we were the least motivated we had been on the whole trail. We had been hiking between 25 and 30 miles a day throughout the end of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but were suddenly hiking between 10 and 15 miles a day at the beginning of New York. Don’t get me wrong – we were having a great time! We were laughing a lot and taking a lot of breaks, but we could not motivate ourselves to walk. During one of our many breaks during this period, we were looking ahead in our Thru Hiker’s Companion and discovered that there was a train station on the A.T. that would take us straight into New York City for $23 round-trip! This was the perfect adventure for two hikers who were getting a bit tired of hiking! It gave us a short term goal to shoot for as well, since the train only ran on the weekends. We would have to hike close to twenty miles for a few days in order to get to the train station on time. During these days leading up to the New York City trip, we were a little concerned about what to do with our packs and our overall hygiene/appearance. To be honest, we were a little nervous/excited/anxious about the whole thing. We had been in the woods for three months around only a few people at a time and were about to immerse ourselves in the middle of the largest city in the United States. Caleb had never been to New York City before, and I hadn’t been since early in my teenage years. We really had no idea what we were doing. Luckily, the night before we were to catch the train, we stayed with a young couple at a shelter who happened to live in Brooklyn. They gave us some recommendations about where to spend our time, told us about a part of Brooklyn called “Williamsburg” where we would not stand out as filthy or underdressed, wrote down directions to different places, and even gave us an emergency number of one of their friends in case we thought we needed some help. But most importantly, they assured us that we would be fine in the City. We arrived at the train station a good two hours before the train was scheduled to depart. There was a Garden Center right on the road that was near the train station and we went there to ask if they might be able to keep our packs while we were in the City for the night. They were super hiker-friendly and said that hikers will come to them often and that they are glad to help in any way they can. They let us store our packs, take showers, charge our phone/camera, and loiter on their front porch until the train arrived. It worked out great for us. Next thing we know, we are on a train headed for Grand Central Station. Here’s a great video of Caleb’s reaction when we first arrive inside GCS:
We were just shell-shocked from the enormous amount of commotion we were suddenly amidst. First thing we did was found a pizza place right next to the Empire State Building. The cook offered us some plates for the pizza and Caleb said we’d be fine with just the pizza tray and the cook said, “Have some class, kid, you’re in New York now.” It was a good introduction to New York City. After pizza, we walked all over Manhattan for the rest of the daytime (we arrived in NYC at 4:00 PM on Saturday and were planning on leaving on the 7:30 AM Sunday train after staying up all night (we are trying to spend as little money as possible)). We only hiked 15 miles on the trail on the day we left for New York, but we had to walk close to 30 miles that day after all the walking we did in New York. We saw the Statue of Liberty, a movie production, and then braved the subway system in order to make it to Williamsburg for the nightlife. After bar-hopping for the night, we headed back to Manhattan around 4 AM and played homeless for a bit. We shot a video during this period of the night. It's at the top of the page in the video bar.Grand Central Station opened around 6 AM where we arrived and tried to sleep for a little bit. The police woke us up a few times and told us we couldn’t sleep on the floor but we were so tired that we would just switch locations. Soon our train arrived and we were all of a sudden back in the woods on the Appalachian Trail. We hiked five miles to the next shelter where we took an extended nap before hiking a final five miles to a shelter we stayed at for the night. It was a crazy transition from one atmosphere to another and it felt like the trip was almost a dream…