Day 119-Making It to the Concession Stand Before They Closed!

July 15-13.8 miles-Graymoor to AT camping at Canopus Lake-AT mile 1426.8

Today was a rather boring day as far as the trail goes. Of course the rocky ups and downs continued (I wonder what the total elevation gain was for today-seemed like a lot). We had one view of...well...trees. 

Lovely...

In addition to the endless ups and downs, today was an exercise in over, under, and around downed trees. 

Around

Over

Under (took my pack off for this one)

I did see a funny sign near the beginning of the hike today. 

The road. It’s gravel. They put up a sign for a gravel road, but for every other high speed road crossing we have done...no such sign. 

Our destination for the day was Canopus Lake which is part of Clarence Fahnestock State Park. There is a beach and, more importantly, a concession stand. Guthook said it closed at 4:00. We would be cutting it close. We didn’t take much in the way of breaks, and I was going as fast as I could (which is to say not very fast due to the stupid steep downs with rocks, and the fact that I need to baby my left knee and right foot). 

We had a decent section of flat, good trail that went along the top of a wall. 

I was able to go pretty fast. 

We came to the road that went to the campground of the state park. There were several signs telling AT hikers to stay on the trail for 1 1/2 more miles to a blue blaze trail to the lake and the concession stand, and the AT hiker camping. It also said the concession was open until 5:00! Yes!

Well, the trail was most certainly longer than 1.5 miles, and it continued to go up and down. Really??? It was most annoying! Sure Foot was ahead of me. I caught up to him as he was standing on the trail...bleeding. I said, “ Sure Foot, you’re bleeding!” He has tripped on a root, then tripped on another one and face planted down a hill in the bushes. All his wounds were superficial abrasions. He was actually quite lucky. I did tell him we might have to change his name...

We finally made it to the blue blaze trail, which was then another half mile to the lake. 

Canopus Lake

We headed straight for the concession stand. We made it with plenty of time to spare. I had two hotdogs, a Sierra Mist, and a Gatorade. By the time we got our food it was after 4:00. Two hours later, we still ate dinner!

The AT Hiker camping is a big field. It’s about another 1/4 mile from the lake. There’s no water at the field. Once we set up our tents (and realized there was no water), we had to walk back to the concession area to get water. Sure Foot found a hose bib (disconnected the hose). It was one of those that needs a special tool. Fortunately, the tool was there too!

We returned to the field. Shortly, three southbound section hikers arrived. Benji, Yosef, and Yiddi started two days ago. They are really nice guys. Not too much later, Fairplay and Ultra showed up. Fairplay said he knew who we were from Braids’ videos. Turns out, they were also at the Appalachian Motel on our zero day. They’ll get ahead of us as they are doing bigger mile days, but it was fun talking to them. Fairplay is hilariously funny. 

So we’ve ended up with quite the crowd here. As usual, I’m the only female. The guys are fun though.