Date: 2018-07-17
To: Kent CT
Miles today: 8.7
Weather: overcast clouds

First thing this morning my foot gave me a proper scolding. I muffled it¢s voice with a double dose of Advil.Last night I was reading a lot of comments about the town of Kent. None of them were positive. It seems that according to previous backpacker¢s experiences, Kent is unfriendly to hikers. The laundromat in particular had a bad reputation. Ugh! If we could skip the town, we would. We smell awful, to the point where we can¢t stand ourselves. We are also almost out of food. We must go to Kent. The town is .7 off the trail, plus there would be walking from one amenity to the next. The only accommodations in town where steeply priced. Once our chores were done our options would be continuing north to the next shelter 7 miles down the trail, or backtrack southbound .3 miles to a shelter. I suppose stealth camping was also an option, but it is illegal in Connecticut. We decided to just play things by ear and see how the day went. There were a number of steep climbs along the trail and so we were going much slower than we anticipated. The sky rumbled over our head. I was apprehensive as we finally descended down to the road to town, and I whispered a soft prayer ¢Lord please take care of us in Kent.¢There was a vehicle parked on the road side where we emerged from the forest. A woman was sitting in the driver¢s seat with the windows rolled down. As I walked past she leaned over and asked ¢Do you need a ride to town?¢¢Yes please,¢ I replied. ¢That would be wonderful.¢She glanced over at Cole who emerged from the woods behind me.¢ Are you the mother who is hiking with her teenage son?¢ she asked.¢Yes I am.¢ I replied and I introduced myself and Cole. Her name was Susan. Apparently yesterday while I was ordering food from the food truck Cole had chatted with a father and son hiking team. They were her husband and teen and they had told her about us. They were slack packing today along with a second son, and she was waiting for them so that she could resupply them with water. Not only did she offer to drive us to town, but she offered to take us to all of the places that we needed to go and return us to the trail. First she dropped us off at the IGA so we could buy our resupply items. She went back to the trail with the water for her family and then returned to the IGA to pick us up. Next we headed to the laundry mat. As we were talking she suddenly asked ¢Would you like to come and spend the night with us in our RV?¢I could hardly believe my ears. I was sitting in the front seat and I turned behind me to see Cole¢s reaction. He was frantically nodding his head up and down.¢ We would like that very much.¢ I replied.At the laundromat there was no washroom or place to change into our rain gear. Except for sox, underwear and recently a second shirt, we do not carry extra clothes. The second shirt is actually a luxury and a weight penalty. Everything we were wearing needed to go into the wash. So, on laundry day we wear our rain gear. Mine was in rough shape with the entire crotch area held together with duct tape. Susan drove us over to the Kent welcome centre where we were able to use the washrooms to change. She then returned us to the laundry mat to do our laundry. By then it was pouring down rain so we didn¢t feel quite as awkward in our rain gear.Inside of the laundry mat was a machine that dispensed coins for the washers driers and soap. I tried inserting all of my small bills but each one in turn was rejected by the machine. Finally I inserted a $20 bill. The machine poured forth a pile of quarters and Susan B Anthony coins. Cole and I laughed harder and harder as it spat out coin after coin after coin. I could just imagine the weight that the excess coins were going to add to my pack.I snoozed a little while the clothes were washing. On the dry cycle I ran out in the rain to get Cole and I food. We unloaded some of the coins into the laundromat vending machine.When our laundry was finished, Susan drove us to the outfitters to scope it out. We then drove to the trail head where her husband and two sons were finishing their hike for the day. Their RV park was an hour and a half away from Kent. On the way there we really enjoyed the conversation that we had with Susan and her family. They stopped and treated us to pizza for dinner. It was a bit late by the time we reached their RV. Cole and I both had showers in the RV with a towel! Unless we are staying in a hotel, we don¢t generally have a towel to dry ourselves off with after a shower. We use a very small multi purpose absorbent cloth. The towel was big and soft and warm and dry. Cole slept on the couch which he said was the most comfortable couch he had ever laid on. I slept in a loft above the back of the toy hauler. It was a good sleep. Thank you Lord for taking such good care of us in Kent!