Mountains Under Foot

From Hazard’s notes:
Day 97: August 14, 2009
Travel:
From: Wintturi Shelter, VT
To: Hanover, NH
Beginning: 7:30am
Ending: 9:00pm
Number of miles hiked:
a) Trail – 26.2
b) other – .2 back to trail, .2 each way to Cloudland farms.
c) AT Mile Marker – 1736.5 cumulative
Weather:
AM & PM: Sunny and hot all day. Just beautiful.
People: Tennessee Ed & Sis, Tim, “Short and Sweet” & Greybeard, Elizabeth.
Animals: Iron bridge jumpers.
Money: $6 for ice cream & soda at Cloudland, $7 for sandwich and lemonade at the deli, $10 burger at Molly’s. $1748 cumulative.
Notes of the day:
AM: Angry girl didn’t make eye contact with either one of us all morning. Since she was giving us the cold shoulder and we didn’t want to talk to her anyway, we turned our attention to Tennessee Ed and Sis who were also in the shelter last night. Ed was an old fellow who had been section hiking the AT for over 30 years and if it hadn’t had been for the rain earlier in the season he would be finishing the trail on this outing. His sister, who is from High Point, NC, has been joining him on these 1-2 week hikes for over 15 years. We set off down the trail towards VT 12 where Tim was starting his day hike this morning. We ran into him a couple miles down the trail and we were really stoked to see him. He greeted us and handed us a Gatorade and a bunch of snacks, including homemade cookies from his wife, so we sat down and had a snack. Sadly this was the last time we’d see Tim, but three days of him looking after us was really special and part of which makes hiking the trail so rewarding. So thank you Tim for all that you have done! The rest of the morning we waded through a couple of cow pastures and drifted over some hills, where I got stung by a bee, until we got to Cloudland Road.

PM: We had heard about how Cloudland Farms had the best Ice Cream in Vermont, so naturally we had to verify this statement for ourselves. We climbed up the hill, past the construction crews, to the little store attached to the stables. Spoon bought blackberry ice cream and a maple soda and I got strawberry ice cream with a raspberry rhubarb soda. All of it was insanely delicious as the ingredients were all organic and then we added some M&Ms and cookies to the pint from Tim’s goodie bag. Hanging between two trees was a hammock that I couldn’t resist taking advantage of on such a beautiful day. I called my dad to talk to him about our extraction from Maine since that was coming up in three weeks and then I called my mom. It would have been nice to just lay around talking on the phone all day but we needed to get into Hanover by tonight so we gathered our stuff and headed back to the trail. We continued on over the rolling hills of Vermont passing miles of rubber tubing attached to the trees to harvest syrup. It looked like an interconnected network of hose that would funnel the syrup downhill to the farmers below. We came out near VT 14 and started walking down the residential street toward the heart of West Hartford passing some nice homes and even a red barn with the words “Leslie Marry Me!!” painted on the side. As we walked down the hill towards the main street we saw a group of kids standing around the middle of Iron Bridge and then to our surprise one just jumped off plummeting towards the river below. As we walked by, commenting on how crazy they were to be jumping off this bridge, I couldn’t help to think how much fun it must be but at the same time how scary far it was to the water from this height. We turned the corner and found ourselves walking straight towards a deli called the West Hartford Village Store. I went inside and was soon in line ordering a sandwich called “The Woodstock” (menu description is in Photos section) and had a lemonade to go with it. Spoon ended up ordering the same thing and we both sat down and enjoyed the rare luxuries of a deli sandwich. By the time we were done it was getting late and we were risking another late night of hiking. We picked up the pace and were able to get to Norwich, VT shortly before dusk. As we walked down the quiet neighborhood street we noticed a cooler sitting outside someone’s house that looked to be trail magic. It was! Inside were slices of watermelon and chocolate cake. While we sat down taking in the delicious snack, the owners of the house were outside and came over to greet us. We came to learn that this was “The Brain’s House” who had thru-hiked a few years ago and his parents were Short & Sweet and Greybeard. We got to talking and I asked them if there was any cheap place to stay in Hanover and Greybeard gave me the short answer of “No” but if we wanted we could stay with them for the night. Wow! Spoon and I excitedly accepted their offer. They even said to just throw our packs in the garage if we wanted to finish our hike into town and get a burger at one of the restaurants and just give them a call when we wanted to get picked up and brought back to their place. This was an unreal offer and we couldn’t be happier to have a place to stay that night as we were worried we might have to hitch out of town just get a motel. Now we were walking pack-free into Hanover to look for a place with some burgers and after a couple of poor suggestions from college students we landed in Molly’s. We were seated in the back next to the kitchen as always, but got a server named Elizabeth that was really excited to hear about our journey on the AT so far spending close to 15 minutes chatting with us and ignoring her other customers. Spoon and I both ordered the meatiest and cheesiest burger on the menu which had different album artwork on the front and back that was really cool. Once we were satisfied from our dinner I called Greybeard and he picked us up and brought us back to Norwich. Showers were had in between telling stories of our recent travels. We got to see pictures from the Brain’s parent’s recent trip that summer through the White Mountains of which we were about to enter. They even took care of our laundry while they got us pumped for the trail ahead. Before too long it was after 11pm and we needed to get some sleep, so we retired to the downstairs where air mattresses awaited. When the lights went out, I was out.