Date: 2012-07-31
From: Pine Swamp Brook Shelter

To: Bearded Woods Hostel; Salisbury, CT
Miles today: 16.4
Weather: broken clouds

Nothing special happened until lunch time. The guide said there was town food 0.2 miles off trail, on a side trail called the Mohawk Trail. The trail was not tread very frequently and was very overgrown. After practically bushwacking to there, I discovered that the restaurant had shut down. Bummer.Five miles later I walked into Falls Village, CT only to discover that all the restaurants in town were weekend only places. Double bummed, I walked to the package store (New Englandese for liquor store) to buy some soda. There the old man behind the counter offered to drive me a town over to a gas station/deli for lunch! After lunch, I walked by a hydro-electric plant, over a huge iron bridge built by the same company that built the one over Sawarta Creek in PA. Immediately after that was the Great Falls on the Housatonic River, and they were GREAT. Sadly the power plant had built a dam just above the falls and were siphoning off most of the water, but it was still a sight to behold.Then it was just doing some easy miles to Salisbury, CT, with an easy hitch into town. I got a trail magic soda along the way. In town I resupplied running into Bad Penny and Daffy, and saw a flyer for a hostel that lots of SOBOs had raved about and Rhyno had texted me a few weeks prior to say he had a great time there as well. So I called him up and he came to pick me up, Uncle Oops, and his girlfriend Meatstick.Bearded Woods is better described as a B&B/Hostel Hybrid, a Bunk 'n Dine. For $50, you got a huge dinner and breakfast (everything handmade), a shower, laundry, and luxurious linens. Even the bath mats felt AMAZING under the bare feet. I think they were microfiber with some sort of foam padding. Hudson and his wife Big Lou (4'11" tall) run the place. They even offer a glass of wine with dinner at no extra cost. Lots of people had gotten sucked into this place, and it was hard to leave, even at the $50 price tag.Kazoo was there. He had just gotten back from the hospital where they had pulled 43 ticks off of him, all fresh that day. They put him on the antibiotic regimen for Lyme Disease. Squatch was there who just hikes trails every year, filming documentaries. He sells them online to fund his hikes. He was a stand-up comedian and had all kinds of hilarious stories. Check him out at squatchfilms.com.Hudson was also a very engaging story teller. He is big into trapping and bow hunting and collects animal skulls and pelts. He had a video of a time he found a freshly dead bobcat on the road, threw it into his truck, and then saw the thing wake up 10 miles down the road. The video is him trying to coax the bobcat out of his truck, and it just hissed, growled and swatted back. It was pretty exciting.He also talked of an abandoned town called Dudley Town. It's a ghost town that the Mohawk Trail goes right by, and supposedly lots of horrible things happened there when it was inhabited. The police have closed the ruins to the public permanently, with motion sensors, security cameras, and loud speakers to yell at anyone who does enter. Creepy. Look it up on Wikipedia.There was also the Leatherman back in the 1800s. He walked a 36 day circuit through a bunch of towns, living in rock cave shelters, wearing an entire 60lb suit of leather. He didn't speak much English and people would just give him food. But people in a given town stop knew to expect him every 36 days. Look him up too.