Dalton, MA to Pawling, NY

Well, it's been a while since we have added a journal; we are already in New York!

Dalton was a great trail town, with two incredible hosts, Tom Levardi and Rob Wolf. We stayed one night with Rob at "The Birdcage," and are grateful there are people like him along the trail. As soon as we arrived we were treated like his own family, he took us in off the street, washed our clothes and let us use his bathroom to shower. We then sat around for the afternoon and visited with him, and the other hikers. At dinner time, we piled into his van and went out to eat at the Old Country Buffet. We met one hiker who had stayed with Rob for over three weeks. Leaving Dalton was tough the next morning, but we had plans to try to hike 20 mile days until we reached Falls Village, CT.

The day we left Dalton, we were scheduled to meet Anna's cousin Sara and her husband Allen with newborn baby Rachel Mae, in Lee, MA; an 18 mile walk from Dalton. Thanks to the gentle Massachusetts terrain, and a "perfect hitch" into town, we cruised into Lee around 3:00 and did some post office mail drop business. Sadly, neither of our boxes arrived in Lee in time, so we asked that the Post Office forward them to Falls Village. We bought food at the Price Chopper in town to substitute the mail drop.

It was great to see Sara & Allen with baby Rachel and Allen's parents! We conversed outside the Post Office in a town gazaebo, and afterword went to have pizza at the Arizona Pizza Co.

Once we got back on the trail, we immediatly crossed the Massachusetts Turnpike, and headed up into the hills out of Lee, 1.8 miles to an AMC controlled cabin at Upper Goose Pond. For being controlled by the AMC we liked this place a whole lot. The care-taker (Wayne) was very friendly and helpful, and the cabin was beautiful. The only downside was that there were no bunks available when we rolled into camp at 8:00 PM.

Beyond Upper Goose Cabin, Massachusetts was pretty bland, though we got back into some mountains and had some of the best views of the state in the last 10 miles or so, having gone over the state's 2nd highest mountain just before we crossed the border into Connecticut. Immediately upon entering Connecticut we climbed their highest point, Bear Mountain at the end of our day.

One of Anna's best college friends, Mary, and her family came to hike from Salisbury to the CT/NY border. They met us in Salisbury where we stopped early our first day in Connecticut to shower at an informal hostel run by PCT hiker "Neighbor Jay".

Mary and her family were extremely gracious to us, filling us with dinner at the Arizona Pizza Co. and various other eateries during their time with us. They hiked with us for 5 days, and met their goal of reaching the NY border. We are very thankful that Mary and her family came to hike with us, and thoroughly enjoyed hiking and camping with them.

We've got to get going, the library is closing...New pictures are up on Web-Shots.
Thanks for reading, we'll update again soon.

Buster and Bluebird