The end of July finds us taking a short break from the trail in Sidney, New York at Garrett’s house.We had good hiking from Hanover, NH through to the middle of VT (Rutland) where the Long Trail intersects with the AT (The LT is a trail that runs the vertical length of VT and the AT follows it for the its bottom half).
We had been talking about taking a break to go to Sidney when we reach the end of Vermont but decided to go a little early when we reached Rutland that had an Amtrak station. We took a train to Albany and then a taxi to the bus station and a bus to Oneonta, where Garrett’s mom works at Hartwick College. She then took us back to his house where we’ve been resting, eating a lot and reorganizing for 3 days. Garrett's parents have been cooking LOTS of delicious food for us. Last night we went out to Pine Lake and visited with Kathy and Andy (Garrett's friends from college) and that was really nice.
Hanover was exciting because it was our first town that is actually on the trail in that the trail took us right down the main street and by Dartmouth’s campus. We got free slices of cheese and cheese-less pizza at Brick and Brew (free for thru-hikers), had a fancy dinner at a Thai restaurant, saw the Prairie Home Companion movie, had some Ben and Jerry’s because we were almost in Vermont, visited EMS (Garrett got a much-needed rain jacket on sale and I got a new hiking shirt) and spent a good hour wandering down the aisles of the local grocery store (our favorite thing to do).
Hanover didn’t have any good hostels so we had to hike back out to the edge of the woods to set up our tent. We were planning on leaving the next day but it was raining hard. We found some north bounders who were also waiting out the rain (Master Plan, Nifty and Patches) and ended up staying another night on the porch of some kind people.
We love the trails in Vermont! They are all packed dirt or pine needles. Very few rocks and the mud has really dried up. We’re hoping to do our first 20 mile day as we move toward Bennington. So far we’ve been doing 15-18 mile days and feeling pretty good.
One of the interesting experiences of hiking the AT is staying at the various hostels that kind people set up in the trail towns. In Rutland we stayed the most interesting one yet. It was a Twelve Tribes community that ran a cafe and bakery with a hostel for hikers above. We bagged freshly-baked bread for our stay and they served us delicious dinner and breakfast and sat around visiting with all of us hikers. We finally met up with Carlos, Book and Chunky Monkey (people we'd met/ had been hiking with in Maine) at the hostel. This hostel is known on the trail as the "religious commune in Rutland" and has a great reputation for kind people, good beds (men and women sleep in seperate quarters) and good food. They reminded me of a hippie Amish community.
We also had another surprise in Rutland when we were walking down the street and Garrett ran into his neighbor Nelson from Pine Lake (the environmental campus of Hartwick where he lived during college). Nelson lives 30 miles south of Rutland and was up for the day. He drove us around on a few errands and then back to his house for a few hours.
We’ve posted all our pictures up to Hanover on Webshots. You can see them by going here: http://community.webshots.com/album/552369668gFwWrh
We’ve switched over to disposable cameras now because the digital got a little wet.
We're off in a few hours to catch a train back to Rutland. We'll be in Bennington by Friday the 4th and then it won't be but another day and we'll be in Mass.
We hope everyone is well! We've figured out that we're about a quarter through the hike. Sometimes it feels like we've been out here for years and then other times feels like we started last week.
peace,
buster and bluebird
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