Mountains Under Foot

From Hazard’s notes:
Day 86: August 3, 2009
Travel:
From: Salisbury, CT
To: The Hemlocks Lean-to, MA
Beginning: 11:00am
Ending: 6:30pm
Number of miles hiked:
a) Trail – 14.1
b) other – .4 to trail
c) AT Mile Marker – 1502.7 cumulative
Weather:
AM & PM: Complete 180 from the previous day before. Sunny and warm, clear skies.
People: Rocky, Some SOBOs that graduated from UNC hiking with an old guy and Gozer.
Animals: Chipmunk throw down on Bear Mountain. Mouse.
Money: $25 for the Inn, $15 for breakfast. $1579 cumulative.
Notes of the day:
AM: What an awesome night sleep. I really didn’t want to leave that bed. I called Lowa and told them about my boot falling apart and I arranged new boots to be shipped to Cheshire, MA. We packed our stuff up and checked out of the room. We walked with Rocky down to where all the restaurants were and she stopped in the coffee shop while we went back to The Bistro. I had some killer Eggs Florentine while reading the NY Times. The iPod was passed around to check emails and Spoon called up Tarptent to order a tent to replace the hammock system that wasn’t working. On our way out of town we noticed Rocky was just ahead of us and as we passed her I noticed she engaged each of us in conversation, but it wasn’t long before we had passed her. I hung back and chatted for awhile but eventually I had to speed up or else be left far behind. It seemed such a shame to leave such a nice and friendly person in the dust.

PM: All throughout the hike I felt really good about being on the trail. It had probably been weeks since I last felt this energized to be out here. I remember thinking to myself that days like this one were the reason why I wanted to hike the AT. The weather was perfect and we had a couple challenging climbs that ended with fantastic views. Bear Mountain was the first we climbed up which had a stone monument that we sat on top of while enjoy some lunch. The CT/MA state line was .7 north so it was exciting to change states finally as CT was not kind to us. We had Race Mountain and Mt. Everett to conquer before descending to the shelter for that night. Gozer was there without Fancypant because he took a zero at the campsite where I had last seen him. A couple SOBOs that graduated from UNC came and we had a good time ’smack’ talking each other. You win a couple of national championships and you think you are the greatest thing since sliced bread…pfft. I crawled up into the loft early while some of the others made a fire for the first time in about a month. My iPod wouldn’t turn on again so I got to read some of ‘The Time Machine’ that Cat had sent in my care package. Thanks Cat!