At the Mayor's House

I am currently at the house of the mayor of Unionville, NY. Unionville is about 1,330 miles from Springer and about 845 to Katahdin. I am now close enough that is is worthwhile to start thinking about how much further we have to go. I am also out of PA and into NJ. The trail is on the border of NY and NJ here so we just went into the NY side for a resupply. The mayor here is very hiker friendly and last year set up a hostel in his house. So I am freshly showered and my clothes are currently being dried. I think there are going to be over 20 hikers staying here tonight which beats the mayors previous best of 10.
It has been a while since my last post. PA was not fun. It started out hot and buggy and rocky. Then we added the sounds of cicadas in places and gypsy moths. The gypsy moths were very annoying. They have no natural enemies so they just multiply. For most of PA they were in their caterpillar form. They eat the leaves, so there were tons of partially eaten green leaves on the ground. Then they dangle over the trail. Their fur stings, so after I had one land on me I had the bumps and itching on my arm for almost a week. At night they were pooping so much that it sounds like it is raining. They are now in their cocoons, but there is not very much shade from the trees because most of the leaves are on the trail, not above it. We shall soon see how much a a nuisance they are as moths.
PA was also suppossed to be easy for resupplies since the trail goes through 4 towns and there are many others that are close. However several of the towns that the trail passes through have no supermarket or place to resupply. So you think are are getting it easy and then you still have to get a shuttle or a hitch into the next town. PA was not very easy for getting a hitch. Down south you could almost count on the first pickup truck stopping and giving you a ride. Not so in PA. When we needed a ride it was hard to get. In the town with shuttles, they were overpriced. But we did not always have other options.
I will have to continue my discussions of PA later since there are several other people waiting to use the internet. I will be in NYC from June 30-July 7 so I will be updating my adventures then and adding pictures.