Day 1 - Driving

Left work, went to the beer store to fill up the cooler with ice (surprised?), and headed north.

Picked up 5 counties in New Jersey.  It wasn't exactly the list of counties I was hoping for.  I wanted to stop in the James Fenimore Cooper Rest Area in Burlington County, but it was closed.  Maybe just the building is closed and the parking is open?  No.  Closed.  Ramp barricaded.  I'm sure the new rest area will be just lovely when it reopens, but all I wanted was the cache in the back.

Picked up 2 counties in New York.  Again, not the ones I was hoping for.  The cache in Rockland County I picked as a park-and-grab close to the highway was on a road blocked by about 237 police cars.  OK, 3 police cars.  But definitely blocked.  Fire trucks and ambulances, too.  Probably an accident.  Hope everybody is OK, but geez, people, I needed that cache!

As I got further north into New Jersey and then into southern New York, the rain showers stopped, the clouds parted, and there was some pretty blue sky.  I hoped this was a sign that the weather forecast was changing.  Constant rain, heavy at times, chance of thunderstorms is not a good day for hiking up a mountain and climbing a fire tower.  But maybe they got it wrong?  Well, maybe not.  Forecast still looks like crap for the next few days.

Picked up an Ulster County (where I'm staying) cache in a park-and-ride basically walking distance from my hotel just in case the weather is so bad I don't get any more caches.

Now to figure out where I'm going tomorrow...