We got another early start from Bucks Brook, mostly because we knew it was going to rain and we needed to get into DeRuyter for our resupply. We had lots and lots of muddy walking this morning, through fields and private land, but it was mostly level without too much in the way of steep hills this morning. Early on, we passed the Link Trail. This is the trail system designed to connect the Adirondacks and the North Country Trail to the FLT. It also runs up to the Erie Canal system. We joked that we could just walk to the Erie Canal and walk home that way! After crossing the first road, we began to get rained on again. We didn't mind much as this now seems to be the norm for us! We walked through more mud and slop for a while, up and down some rolling Central NY hills, before finally coming to the road we could walk to get into DeRuyter to pick up our resupply box.
Where the Adirondacks can meet the FLT.
We tried to hitch the entire time we were walking, but had absolutely no luck. We were lucky, however, to get into DeRuyter 10 minutes before the post office closed for lunch! At least we had that luck on our side! We repacked our food bags and got out the new maps before we realized we honestly didn't even need the resupply because with all the road walking we would be doing the next few days we would be home in less than 2, instead of the full three we had planned. Somehow, now NoKey had six days' worth of food! Yikes!
We stopped at Sal's Pizzeria on the way out of town - NoKey got two slices and I got a pepperoni roll. Sal said we could recharge our phones while we ate, so we did. We hiked back out of town, again trying to hitch back to no avail. From here, we had a hot, but thankfully not sunny, road walk pretty much to near where we were camping for the night. We passed an Elk Farm and had pretty much no traffic the entire time, so that was nice. When we finally reached the top of Cuyler Hill Road to turn back into the woods, we took a break and checked our phones. I had a message from the President of the FLTC apologizing for the rude behavior I experienced a week ago when I called the office for help on map 28. I really appreciated him following up with me, even though I wasn't the person who called! Donna, the kind woman who called me back when we were out of Downsville, had called and lodged a complaint on my behalf for being treated so poorly by the office worker on the phone. He assured me they were taking steps to make sure this would never happen again and encouraged us to give him a call when we got into his part of the trail. Thank you, Pat!
The beautiful rolling hills at the top of Cuyler Hill Road and Stony Brook Road.
From here, we climbed up to our first 2000 foot hill we've seen in a while before coming downhill for a few miles into our campsite at Wiltsey Glen. With all the rain, the whole area was pretty washed out again, but our campsite was pretty dry with the leaf and pine needle coverage. We set up camp at 6 p.m. and were shocked that we had done nearly 25 miles for the day with all the road walking to our box in DeRuyter. Even though road walking is hard on us, it does get you pretty far pretty quickly! Tomorrow we are hoping to get into McGraw, NY and find a way to get home for the weekend. I've lost a lot of motivation, probably due to the weather, and am ready to get home and take a break.