Discovering New York by Train & Tent

Nick and I kicked off the summer with camping over 4th of July weekend. We quickly realized that camping/outdoors stores are a little scarce/expensive in New York City so we decided to order our tent off an online website called Altrec.com. After much comparing we decided on the the Eureka! Pinnacle Pass 2 XTA tent, free shipping..cool. Overnight shipping only $20, REALLY cool. So far so good with this tent, but we definitely need to break it in, it hasn't even seen rain yet. We really had to pack light since neither one of own cars and are down with taking public transportation. We took Metro North in Grand Central (and found out what happens if you're not early enough which led to an up charge for buying our tickets online, damn) and rode the train about 90 minutes upstate to Beacon, NY. After taking in some really beautiful scenery from the train windows, we lugged our gear off the platform to meet Dick, the Lord of the Manor known as Malouf's Mountain. He was definitely driving an old, emphasize OLD green school bus lightly accented with painted trees. We had 3 hike-in options. The short (sissy hike) of 30 minutes to the campground, the 2.5 hour hike along a creek or breakneck ridge which is killer at 5-6 or so hours. Basically what happens is Dick takes all your gear to your campsite while you hike your A$$ in. There is NO other way to get in and out of the campground other than hiking.. We chose the 2.5 hour hike which was really beautiful, we sorta got lost once, figured it out promptly and sat on a big flat rock in the middle of a stream overlooking a waterfall for lunch. not.too.shabby. After almost getting eating by 2 snakes (ok not really, but they were uncomfortably close) and seeing the biggest ant condominiums I have ever seen we arrived at Malouf Moutain via the white/red trail. Pretty groovy campsite, its just getting started but it's VERY clean and VERY accommadating. Our gear was waiting patiently for us atop our picnic table with a load of firewood neatly stacked under a waterproof flap. Tent up, check. Fire started, check. Cards, Booze, Music, Mosquitos- check check check and BIG check. Time to relax....