Hurricane Post!

Today I spend my first (official) zero day on the trail in the town of Bennington, VT. Obviously the rain alone of Hurricane Irene has made the rivers and streams of the forests impassible. I am blessed to be able to spend the duration of the storm in the home of Glenda, a friend of my friends Matt and Aislinn. She cooked up a huge breakfast for me this morning and has graciously opened her house up to me. This came at a perfect time for me as I have been losing a  lot of weight recently. It's so hard to keep weight up on the trail. When you walk twenty miles a day with a pack over mountains, you really can't eat enough. I end up atoning for on-trail weight loss by eating as much as possible at restaurants in every town I pass through. I know it's time to head into town when I can look down and see ribs I never knew were there before. 

Since I have almost completed the AT section of Vermont (15 miles left till the Mass. border), I guess I'll give a short recap of the past week.

Immediately upon entering Vermont on the first day I walked by a man bathing the pond outside his house, completely nude. This wasn't a backwoods location, but centrally located on a public town road. I thought "OK" and kept walking. The next day I was walking (in the woods this time) and a man walked toward me in the northbound direction. We both plodded past each other, exchanged "How's it going?"s and continued on. Two or three steps later it hit me that he was completely naked, and was holding a pair of shorts in front of his "upper thigh region". By the time I recovered enough to ask him if he was OK he had already disappeared into the foliage. At this time I was about to go onto a side trail that led to a shelter about a hundred yards into the woods to take a lunch break. There were loud noises and uproarious laughter emanating from the direction of the shelter. I stopped, thought about it for a second, decided I really wasn't all that hungry yet, and left the possible origin of the naked man's nudity behind me. 

I had a big day planned for Thursday. I was going to get up early, hike ten miles into Manchester Center, eat a cheeseburger, resupply, get out of town as soon as possible, and hike ten more miles to put me in good position to be in Bennington for the weekend - all by 8PM. The first part of the day went flawlessly: I made great time over a couple mountains and hitched into MC by 12:30PM. I had an angus cheeseburger (This is for you Uncle Alan and Aunt Nancy!), had two ice cream cones at MacDonald's (VERY underrated for their ice cream, $1.25 total for two cones!), resupplied at Price Chopper, and prepared to hitch out of town when a guy comes up to me and offers me a ride. I gratefully accepted and jumped in his truck. Another tiny elderly man, either his father or father-in-law was in the passenger seat and I was in the extended cab seat. This is the conversation that followed from Price Chopper to the trail head, edited for appropriateness of course.

Driver: You don't have a piano wire with you do you? 

(All three occupants laugh)

Me: No, left it at home.

Old Guy: By the time he got that thing around my neck I would have shot his head off.

(All three laughing, as I peak around the seat to see if he's actually packing heat - he's not, as far as I can tell) 

Driver: Where should we put this one, in the back yard with the other hikers?

(Front-seaters laughing heartily, I chuckle along as I start thinking about which pocket I left my knife in)

Old-guy: We're starting to run out of grave space, you know.

(front seaters continue along this line of conversation as I remember I left my knife in my backpack - which is in the bed of the truck)

Old-guy: You know, I'm an avid hunter.

Me (trying to keep things light): Well, I have a bright orange rainjacket, so don't shoot me out there.

Old-guy: I shoot anything that moves that I can eat.

(I spend the rest of the trip with my hand on the door handle - prepared to jump at any time.

Now obviously nothing happened, and they weren't being serious. But if you ever pick up a hitch hiker (which you shouldn't unless he's a 6-2 hiker with a reddish beard and dashing good looks), don't bring up any of the stereotypes of disastrous hitches or any possible negative occurrences while he or she is in the car. It was the most uncomfortable car ride of my life. I wish I could say that the day got better from there, but I can't. By 10:30 that night I was stuck in a bog at the bottom of a mountain and my headlamp went out. I had batteries in my backpack, but it took an hour for me to find my cellphone to find the batteries, to figure out how to open the headlamp, and get the batteries in the right way. Then I had to hike a few more hours.

This all sounds so negative, but this only made up one day of my time in Vermont which I have otherwise totally enjoyed. Whether it's walking out of the woods into the middle of a cow farm, or passing by farm stands between mountains, it has been a great state. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story. 

A typical mountaintop field.

The largest, furriest caterpillar I have ever seen!

They're really getting creative now...

A pig at a farm that I actually got to stay at for a night!

Farm stand where I ate a strawberry-rhubarb pie.

Me and Phyllis. She was not pleased to be there.

The AT runs along with the LT for about 100 miles - this is for you D. Moore.

Sunset from the top of the Glastonbury fire tower.

I was there, too.

Thanks for reading, God Bless, and I hope everyone stays safe in the storm!

Belated Pictures, Movies, and So Long New Hampshire!

Other than finishing the state of New Hampshire (in 14 days for those who were wondering), not a ton has happened that I would declare as newsworthy, so I figured I'd put up all the pictures that help tell the tale of the past 14 days. Starting with an epic animal encounter...

Yes, there she is. The full "discovery" film can be found on Facebook.

As usual in the Whites - no views.

The "Ice Cream Man" - with brother and creepy cat doll.

Sometimes it's all about the air flow.

I walked out of the Whites and into a field of wildflowers - a great welcome into kinder terrain.

 

 

The AT, where mountains become "mountains".

So, in summation. I ran into a moose, I ran into a week and a half of bad weather, I ran into a man who was giving away free ice cream, and finally I hit easier terrain. I'll be putting up a video on facebook from the last White mountain, Mt. Moosilauke. I went up there during a bad storm and got knocked around by winds that I estimate were close to 100mph. Don't forget to vote on the VT poll! God Bless!

At a Truckstop Diner Just Outside of Lincoln...

Fine, I'm actually in the Lincoln, NH public library, but I couldn't decide on a title that summed up the last week because there were far too many to choose from, so I just went with a line from a country song. I guess I could have referred to the hiking of Mt. Washington and the Presidentials, or the unexpected run-in with forest wildlife that I can't tell you about yet because I can't download pictures or movies for some reason! So basically this is going to be a very boring check-in. In fact, if you want to stop reading because there are no pictures, please feel free - I would if I were you. I'm paying $4/hr to use this computer, and over half of that has been spent trying to post pictures and movies on the blog and on youtube, but apparently this computer isn't set up for that. So safe to say this will be short.

I have approximately twenty miles left of the White Mountains, which would be a sad thing had I enjoyed any views whatsoever. For the most part my summits have been clothed in fog and rain, and the only good pictures I was able to take (other than of said wildlife encounter) was going up and down Mount Washington. For some reason it was one of the easier mountains for me to climb - I may have been somewhat fueled by the promise of food at the top (not something that usually happens while reaching a summit). While the climb was awesome, the Disney World-esque frenzy at the top put me in a daze. I sat down at the cafeteria with my heaping tray of food and watched as families piled off of the train, rushed through the museum, plowed through the food line, bought matching t-shirts at the gift shop, yelled at each other, took pictures with the summit sign, then jumped back on the train for the thirty minute ride to the parking lot. An actual fight broke out between a mother and daughter at my table, which finally convinced me I had stayed too long. It was such a weird concept for me to understand in light of my hike - I was just so happy to have made it to the top and to be there that I couldn't understand why these people weren't amazed at where they were. I know some people's only chance of seeing that kind of view is taking a car or train to the top, but I almost wish it wasn't there - any of it. I probably wouldn't have said this before I became a "hiker", but if you don't earn it I guess you can't enjoy it. For me it will remain a blur of noise and activity in an otherwise mostly serene and beautiful journey. 

Just went past 1 hr, so I guess this means I might as well use up the next half hour that I'm already paying for anyway. As I said earlier, only twenty miles left in the Whites. My knees need to get out, that's for sure. Sometimes it takes me a full minute in the morning to go from crouching at the entrance of my tent to a full standing position. Another benefit of getting out of NH and into VT is that the climbs get easier - or so I'm told - and thus I can finally start to rack up more miles per day. Then when I get to Massachusetts I can really start to crank it up. I've been averaging maybe 13 or so miles per day over the Whites, so hopefully I can get into the 20's with no ginormous rock faces to scramble up and then fall down. Ok, I'm going to use my last ten minutes or so on the internet doing something other than writing. If you've read all the way through, thank you and God Bless! And don't forget to vote on the new poll at the top! And last second shout outs to my parents for sending my supplies to different towns along the way, and to the folks at the White Mountains Hostel for sending me my journal, Bible, and Guidebook that I had left behind! Ok, I really need to stop writing now...