Wawayanda Hilton

Here's H making a journal entry at the Wawayanda Hilton rest stop. The trees have almost entirely shed their foliage and the nights now are too chilled for our three-season bags, so the rains of October weekends officially squashed our plans to backpack this section of the A.T. from Rt. 17A in Warwick, New York, to Rt. 94 in NJ. We took the lesser and southern half of the section begining at the Warwick Turnpike and turned at the trail register, making for a 7.5-mile repeater. No spectacular vistas to speak of and the landscape was mostly pretty bleak and scraggly, so there is little to note. Except, of course, for the hunters. Please correct me if I am wrong, but why are there people with shotguns blasting squirrels in a state park and standing directly on the Appalachian Trail??!! Just off Iron Mountain road was a man with two kids who were shooting right from the trail. Before heading out, we saw a tree or two with No Hunting signs posted on them, and at the parking area, we saw a hunter walk down the trail when we started and one returned from the opposite direction at the trailhead when we were finished. Makes me wonder if it's suddenly become hiker season!!