Date: 2007-09-12
From: Seth Warner Shelter

To: Mt. Greylock
Miles today: 13.2

mi. 13.2sleep shelterdest. Mt. Greylock day 62 Welcome to Mass. Almost 2 months in and I just finished my 3rd state. Now they are going to start adding up. The next few are relatively short. Funny side note. Jen commented how my 8 year old nephew said she couldn't get something camo for me. Well I really hate camo. I always say I am alergic to it and I break out in a rash. Just my way of saying I don't like it. Although my coffee tastes a lot better now that I switched from the camo cozy to black on my jetboil stove. It rained off and on all night. We did keep the fire going. I woke up in the middle of the night to water the leaves and put a couple big logs on the fire. Catz said he did the same later. It kept burning though the rain. Catz is a wonder when it comes to fire. Today I had to make it into town. Only 7 miles into town. Good thing too. All the food I had left was 2 snickers and some cookie crumbs. I had the crumbs and 1 snickers for beakfest along with Catz brew coffee. 5 miles in I got to the VT/Mass border, which is also the southern termis of the Long Trail. I'll have to come back and see this sometime and do the LT. I really like VT. It has been one of my favorite hiking states yet. August or September is a great month to see it. I stopped and had coffee and my last snickers. Now with my pack light I was cruzin. The trail comes out literially though someone's backyard and down a driveway. Yeah someone's driveway. Then crosses the street. Now the plan was to hitch to the post office and pick up my package. I tried for about 20 minutes to hitch. No luck. Funny thing is a few people waved their pointer finger to me as if to say " Now now you shouldn't hitch". If it wouldn't give hikers a bad name I would wave a different finger back at them. I finally decided to screw it and resupply at the store .5 off the trail and bounce my package to another PO. So I walk down. I must have walked down .5++. No grocery store. So I stopped and looked and my map. Yet again I was trying to hitch on the wrong road. I really need to stop doing that. So I walk the .5++ back to the trail. I follow that across a foot bridge over train tracks and a river. I got to the road. I really didn't want to mess around with getting a ride. So I just walked down to the store. When I was walking around the store I happen across Mountain Mike and Catz. They were not far behind me. I orignally was thinking I needed something like 3 days of food. Then Catz told me that I only needed 1 day to get to Dalton. So I go back and put a lot of food back. I still left with an extra meal and snacks just in case. I also am packing out 8 hot dogs, buns, and chz. I have been wanting to do that for awhile. I didn't do Ben and Jerry's here. I needed more food and wanted a little break from it. I did eat a mixed fruit bowel, quart o choclate milk, and half a apple pie. Yeah I have the hiker hunger i full force. We messed around for way to long in front of the store. Catz and I also picked up some beverages. I am now packing the liquer and Catz is carry the olives for Martini's. No low quaility drinking here. Who shoulf roll up but Shaman. He said he spent 4 days in Rutland and zeroed today at Williamsburg. The outfitter there lets for tent behind them. Something in the math with that doesn't add up to me. But who am I to say anything to anyone. At least he is doing what is making them happy. We finally left town. We hiked up to am overlook on mt. Greylock. I stopped off to make a little pit stop. By the time I caught up with Catz he already hade most of the prep work donw for a small fire. We sat there and cooked hot dogs over a fire. A great little dinner. One thing I forgot to mention. When I was at the store the older guy bagging my food asked me if I was going up or down Greylock. I said I was going up. He said you can't take the road. I said I know but I'm hiking. He said well you cankt drive up. I said I know I'm hiking up. He didn't seem to understand that. You had to be there. The lodge on the summit is closed right now. The road going up it is being remade. So the lodge is closed for this and next year. I did end up walking up some of the road. It was getting late and we wanted to make the summit. So we took a road walk to make the sun set. We got there to some great veiws. A great sunset and drinks followed. On top there is an emergency shelter. We had heard about it and was planning on staying there. We got there and found it to be an enclosed shelter with windows all around. It even had 4 benches long enough to lay on for the night. And get this. It had a wood burning stove. We looked out and saw a sign on a shed that said firewood. We opened it and saw enough firewood for the night. We lit the stove and it was great. The hole place was warm. It felt great. No one asked us to leave. I think if we would have had our lights on and making noise the ranger that drove by would have made us leave. But I think he didn't see us. I think if the lodge was open, there would have been no way we could have stayed there. Funny how it all works out in the end.