A whirlwind of a weekend! As Chair of a community college math department I have been BUSY. Scheduling my auto-response email message Friday morning, I let out a sigh of relief. This weekend was mine. 🏃‍♀️

Bear Spray, Akela, and I made High Point State Park our base camp. Akela would be hiking with me; Bear Spray offered to camp and shuttle us to trail heads. If you section hike, you know the time suck that accompanies moving cars every morning. It was a treat to have Bear Spray as our shuttle driver!

Friday we hung out at the campsite on Sawmill Lake. Bear Spray and I had camped here in 2019. My dog, Sidekick Pauli, had been along for that adventure. Since she was not able to hike long distances anymore, I had shuttled Bear Spray to a trail head. What comes around goes around! I loved Sawmill Lake then because it felt remote and the campsite we had that year was pretty nicely secluded. I believe it was site 4, if you’re interested. This time, I came away not so enamored! We camped at the only site left at the time I registered, site 11. This site would be good for a group also reserving 10 and 12 because they were all connected. Zero privacy. Friday night wasn’t too bad. Perhaps because site 10 was unoccupied OR because there were storms and all I could hear was rain on the tent…went right to sleep! But holy mother of…Saturday afternoon/night was a disaster with loud music, loud talking, extra cars that took up all the spaces, AND after dark…one of the guys must have a medical issue like sleep apnea or something…the sounds that came out in the night…AND THEN HE STARTED TALKING CRAZY SHIT IN HIS SLEEP! 😲

If I had been camping alone, I would have left. That whole group was just…no words.

Regardless, the hiking was GREAT!

Saturday, we hiked from Sunrise Mountain back to High Point State Park. This was a pretty easy trek. There were some small climbs, but nothing really crazy. Although, there is one down that was unexpected and it goes straight down! Might be a good idea to channel your inner mountain goat at that spot!

The thing that almost did us in were the mosquitoes. OMG, those blood-sucking little feckers got in our ears, eyes, neck, arms, EVERYWHERE. I literally had one stuck to the rim of my glasses and when I took a selfie (at the bottom of mountain goat drop off) I found there was one on my nose! Our skin was on fire!!

After getting to High Point, we booked it to our campsite to pick up shower supplies and head to the camp showers in hopes of extinguishing ourselves. Arriving at our campsite to the sound of the blaring music and no place to park did not help our moods. I am sure we set the tone for the weekend with our less than welcoming looks to the site 10 inhabitants. 😂😂😂 Don’t care…they were just that bad!

A word on camp showers…a curtain is not enough. Locking doors need to be installed on the showers. That is all.

Hanging at camp later, Bear Spray told us about her day…and she saw a bear!! We saw no wildlife other than mosquitoes and she saw a BEAR. LIFE IS UNFAIR!!!

Saturday night…I knew what I was up against with site 10, so I popped a Benedryl to 1) help with the bug bites which had left little welts all over my freakin body, and 2) help me sleep! It worked for a while, but as I have already stated above, there was no silencing the horrific sounds coming from site 10. 😖 I thought the guy might need an ambulance called at some point! Sleep tests can be a lifesaver…just putting that out there.

Sunday, our section started at High Point and ended at NJ 284. Shuttling to place our cars at 284, we went through a little piece of New York, Unionville to be specific. What a quaint town! Very cute!

Bear Spray took us back to High Point and off we went! The first part of the trail between NJ 23 and High Point Monument is a little rough. Lots of rocks and some climbing. It was already started to warm up and whew! That piece made us sweat! After that it was downhill to the High Point Shelter, then the trail leveled out. My favorite part of this section were the meadows. 🌻 All the summer wildflowers are in bloom right now. A feast for the eyes and the nose! I could hear a tractor across one of the meadows and it was a nostalgic moment as I thought back to my childhood on our farm in Indiana…my dad on his tractor…sweet memory. 🥰

The bugs were not as bad for me during this hike and I was grateful! We were really cruising along, almost to NJ 294, and even with the ever rising temps I was feeling pretty satisfied with our pace. Then we hit a steep hill after Unionville Road…don’t look for it on the map…it is literally a blip…but that blip was a head down, one foot in front of the other, struggle for survival!

Afterwards the path leveled out and it was smooth sailing again, until BOOM right into a bunch of tree branches that were blocking the path.

Can’t go over it, Can’t go under it, Can’t go around it, Got to go through it!

And we did! Hike on!