Date: 2020-09-08
From: Route 4 (Rutland)

To: The Lookout
Miles today: 17.4

Restful night at Flipakey's. She is a very young-looking grandmother two or three times over. Shares the house with a tenant. Her trail name Flipakey was a childhood imaginary creature she created that was part unicorn and part fawn with rabbit feet. Rutland is best known in the AT community as the home of the Yellow Deli hostel, run by the Twelve Tribes church. Most hikers refer to them as a cult and circulate strange stories. I have no first-hand knowledge. Their hostel is closed this year. But Flipakey spent a year with them in the late 90s. She says they are not a cult, just a group recreating the early church intentional community described in the New Testament. A devout Catholic and lifelong Rutland resident, her perspective seems to deserve more weight than that of hikers who spent a night or ate a sandwich there. We even stopped at the Yellow Deli last night on the way back from the trail so she could pick up a dinner order.Clever Man joined me as I started out at Rt 4. He had stayed at the Inn at Long Trail (which was in fact full). We walked the two miles together to Maine Junction where the Long Trail and AT split, and here we parted ways. His dad regularly section-hiked the AT and he joined him several times. He's now middle-aged himself. The LT is his first thruhike.Met more LT-ers coming from the Inn via the AT. One was Bumblebee, a woman who thruhiked the AT in 2018.Then, walking through the Gifford State Park campground, I encountered another NOBO! I haven't seen a true NOBO who started in Georgia since Virginia. Yard Sale started in May and knew some of the hikers I met in Virginia. I left him to take a side trail to Base Camp Outfitter. There I found a foursome of NOBOs. When it rains it pours! These guys were all college-aged: Irish, Felix (German), Big Dog(?) and Stitch. I walked over to the deli and when I returned they were playing disc golf on the course behind the outfitter. I returned to the AT and circled Kent Pond. A dock stood where it crossed the lawn of the Mountain Meadow Lodge. Kayaks sat there and I could see a kayaker out fishing. The day was beautiful so I went up to two guys eating lunch outside the lodge, which they were renovating. I asked about renting a kayak and one told me just to take one owned by the lodge. So I tooled around Kent Pond for an hour, beaching in a little cove for a swim along the way. The sun was out, a light breeze blew, a perfect afternoon to be on the water.Back on trail two SOBOs passed, including a girl named Bigfoot, looking for the deli. I was an expert at that and gave detailed directions.I nearly hiked past Thundering Falls. Actually I did, then thought better of it. I can't be that blase, why am I out here otherwise? The falls weren't exactly thundering due to low flow, but I did get a nice picture of a red mill by the water.Soon I met another NOBO, a flip-flopper who started in Harpers Ferry. Metalbath is a one-handed metal worker who was recently laid off and decided to hike. He exclaimed enthusiastically how he stops often because still loves to take pictures of everything. Talk about not being blase. Ran across southbounders Bonanza and his brother Rocky, who flipped to Katahdin from Glasgow. They knew Thor, Water Queen, Strider and Roam, Sunshine and Lone Wolf. In fact I probably met them down south. Rocky remembers hearing about me hiking with my son in Georgia. In fact he started the same day we left Springer Shelter.I only hiked seventeen miles, though it was tiring over numerous hills in the heat and humidity, because I wanted to stay at the Lookout, a private cabin open to hikers. Had to carry in water three miles. It sits on a high ridge and has a roof deck with amazing views. The night sky was perfectly clear, the Milky Way visible for the first time in over a thousand miles. Stitch built a fire to cook his noodles. His three buddies rolled in after dark and set up on the porch of the enclosed cabin. Inside were three flip-floppers heading southbound to Harpers Ferry - Diane, Pepper, and Risotto. Risotto was tired of Vermont already - the rolling hills and pastures remind him of Virginia, but not in a good way. Seems like he had a bad day (week? month?). They and the NOBOs have blue ATC tags on their packs, with a number as low as 569, which would be from early March. The ATC stopped issuing tags around March 18th.