Mountains Under Foot

From Hazard’s notes:
Day 74: July 22, 2009
Travel:
From: Gren Anderson Shelter, NJ
To: Unionville, NY & the Mayor’s place
Beginning: 8:30am
Ending: 6:00pm
Number of miles hiked:
a) Trail – 20.1
b) other – .8 into town
c) AT Mile Marker – 1335.0 cumulative
Weather:
AM: Morning had the sun poke through but it was overcast overall.
PM: Skies cleared up in the afternoon.
People: The Unionville assistant fire chief. The Mayor! aka Dick and his cohorts Bill and Butch.
Animals: Mosquitoes
Money: $0, $1287 cumulative.
Notes of the day:
AM: Slow morning probably because of the noise last night or lack of distance we had to go today. The leaders of the group behind the shelter came up to us as we were leaving to apologize for all the noise last night. Apparently, they found out a couple of their tents were broken and blah, blah, blah. We pretty much hiked past group after group of hikers all day, some were singing, and some whispered, “There go real hikers” as we walked by. New Jersey, to me, is by far the most clogged section on the AT. We hiked into High Point State Park which had a Washington Monument-esqe spire that is dedicated to veterans past, present, and future.

PM: We had lunch on top of a rocky outcropping with a decent view. Uneventful afternoon of walking while we searched for the Jim Murray property because it was our only lead to this mysterious Mayor. After walking through a field we hit a gravel road with a sign that said “Well water 100ft” and Crocstar remembered we were supposed to follow that sign to Jim Murray’s place. When we got there, we discovered that this was the location of the famed secret shelter, but had a sign saying it was closed for now. So we were kinda lost as to what to do so we made some phone calls to try and figure out where the Mayor was. I ended up calling my brother Will to ask him to search the Internet for what we needed. He was successful and found the Mayor’s exact address. Bingo. It was only another two miles into town so we headed on down the trail until we hit Quarry Road. From there we flagged down a car and they told us Unionville was just down the street, so we followed the road into town. On our way we stopped a man walking on the opposite side of the street and told him we were looking for “the Mayor”. A big grin spread across his face as he knew exactly who we were looking for and gave us directions to his house. We made a quick stop at the general store for drinks and snacks, but I wanted to get to the Mayor’s for dinner. Once at the Mayor’s we knocked on the door and were greeted by Dick, got the tour and “rules”, then ordered to take a shower before dinner. Dinner was sausage and potatoes in sauerkraut, veggie salad, corn on the cob, and garlic bread. It was truly awesome and filling. To top things off we had watermelon for dessert. One of the rules of the house was that we were required to watch a certain video that was actually pretty inspiring. I can’t tell you what it was about, but I will say “Vincera”. (mom’s note – found out ‘who’ the Mayor is, see mine and Steve’s comments below. You should also check out the YouTube link in Steve’s comment, it’s amazing! Also, I think Hazard does mean “Vincerò!”)