Day 1 Concluded

June 22nd, 2009

Tara and I departed NYC at 9:30 with the car haphazardly packed and barely able to see out of the back window. Day 1 was the trial day, to see what works and doesn't work, and initially the packed car wasn't working. Things improved once we shipped off my golf bag and Tara's engagement ring to Texas (full disclosure, it was the golf bag taking up more room than her ring). Following stops at Wal-Mart and a grocery store we had a great drive along RT-23 even though Nuvi (our GPS device) took us through the worst part of Passaic, NJ. The rolling hills were beautiful once we passed NW of I-287 and we made it without incident to High Point State Park at 3 pm. At the Ranger Station we were told that most of the campsites were available so we drove around Sawmill Lake and decided on Campsite 4 which had a wonderful view of the water and a raised sleeping platform.

We also could not miss the bear warning signs posted at every campsite, on each picnic table, by the dumpster and hiking bear boxes (the Appalachian Trail passes through), and next to the meager facilities that existed. We spent about 75 minutes setting up camp and repacking the car (much of this process will be chronicled in a forthcoming post) and took a nice stroll around the Lake before starting the campfire. What struck us the most was the lack of people. Sawmill Lake is over a mile in circumference and there were maybe 4 other sites occupied. We could not see evidence of another camper from our site. While this might be appealing soon, coming directly from the city to the middle of nowhere in the woods with night descending was a touch unnerving. For dinner we dropped a couple of foil wrapped potatoes into the fire once some coals developed. We pulled them out 30 minutes later to find that we had horribly burned the skins and only some of the innards were edible. Following this paltry fare we packed the food and trash into the car, watched the fire die out and retired to our comfy tent with the ‘bear’ bat by me and the fire extinguisher by Tara.