Appalachian Trail (day 60) - William Brien Memorial Shelter to Dennytown Road Campsite / mile 1424

Amazing views, good food and weather! I'm now on what's called a "deli blaze" section of the AT going through NY state, which has many cafes and restaurants close to the trail, tempting hikers with it's delicious (or not so much) produce.

In the morning, after a series of short but steep climbs I've arrived at the Black Mountain and because the sky was clear I got rewarder with the best skyline view of Manhattan on the entire trail, it still was really far away and my camera wasn't nearly good enough to catch it but my eyes definitely did and it was a cool view.

I've carried on to the Bear Mountain where I got rewarded with yet another superb view, this time of Hudson River and it's surroundings and my camera was definitely capable of catching it. The descent from here was smooth, it engineered for hundreds of day hikers scaling it every day. At the bottom, I've had a quick lunch break at the Bear Mountain Inn, a very beautiful, wooden hotel but unfortunately their Hikers Cafe was serving very average and overpriced food which was quite disappointing.

Next section was crossing the huge Hudson River through the Bear Mountain Bridge built in 1923, when completed it was the longest suspension bridge in the world, it was the first vehicular bridge constructed between New York City and Albany. I've met "Gump" a former thru hiker here, he brought his family over to show them this stretch of AT as it was one of his favourite ones when he walked the trail.

After another 7 miles of walking through the rugged NY terrain I've reached my second food stop of the day, Appalachian Market. It was only a mere gas station but it had a very decent take away restaurant inside, you could also fully resupply here. I've ordered very reasonably priced cheeseburger with fries, which was delicious. I've also topped up my supplies for next couple of days.

Last few miles of the day was a mosquito hell, I only made two short stops here, one to visit a little free library someone set up for hikers next to their house, I didn't find any book I'd like to take but it also had few free first aid products, I've got an antibiotic ointment and a skin repair cream sachet. Second stop was by the trail magic cooler set up by a shuttle driver which I though was an excellent way to get more business going! Just before reaching this point I saw a coyote, first one I've seen on AT. It wandered very close to the trail and I've scared it while walking past, it was scaling a steep hillside like no one's business on its was out!

My final stop was a campsite set up by the road for AT hikers, it was only a patch of trimmed grass but it was right on trail and since the weather was supposed to hold for another day, it was more than sufficient for the night. I've met "Bavarian" here, a section hiker from Munich, Germany who only started his adventure today! He was planning to go from here all the way to Maine, he did Virginia to New York section last year and was thinking about finishing Georgia to Virginia the following spring.

We talked for a while, then I've had a quick dinner and jumped into the tent as the mosquitoes were relentless in their pursuit of fresh blood.