Today we had long road walks ahead! We woke up to rain at around 6:30, so we stayed in the tent until it stopped at around 8:30. We packed up and took off late, around 9:40, to begin out road walk. The road mostly skirted private land owned by the Frost Valley YMCA, which our cab driver said is where a lot of kids from NYC come during the summer. We walked a paved road with very, VERY little traffic for 5.5 miles before coming to Blue Hill Cafe/lodge/liquor/grocery store in Claryville. We had huge lunches and real coffee before we continued on the road for six more miles.
Uually we hate road walks, but this one wasn't so bad since it was only about 65 degrees and overcast. I had woken up with a severe headache (pinched nerve in my neck maybe?) and stomachache, so these miles were kind of tortuously. We started uphill on a road that had been paved, but turned to gravel and got more narrow, passing nearly a dozen private hunting clubs and off-the-grid vacation cabins before finally getting onto a real trail.
It was a short 1.3 miles from this point to the Fallbrook Lean-to. We had originally planned to go further, but with my stomachache and the wet trail conditions we decided to stay and dry out in a shelter rather than walking the next 2 miles through what the guide calls "a perpetually mucky area destroyed by Hurricane Irene in 2011." I think we made the right call. We set up our tent to dry and settled in early for the night. Tomorrow we hit the highest point on the FLT!