Date: 2023-07-01
From: Little Pond Lookout 1624.8

To: IP Road at 1643
Miles today: 18.2

Hiking Day 103, Elevation 2578 feetA really good day today. Kerry¢s toes are continuing to improve and he is walking better. We made good time this morning, walking almost 11 miles by noon. We haven¢t been able to do that in the last few weeks. The mud was a little firmer and what with stone hopping, puddle skirting and a little care we managed to keep our feet dry; no small feat! As we were contemplating all the ways the trail could be fixed, we came across a large work crew maybe 4 miles back. They were wearing Long Trail volunteer t-shirts so we stopped to talk to two of them, Kate and Kevin. They were young as were most of the volunteers and I only remark on this because a lot of the trail volunteers we have met are retired. Anyway, we asked Kate and Kevin about the trails and Kevin explained the trails were poorly designed (probably before modern techniques were developed) and now they are trying to fix them. He pointed to about a dozen boulders that would be placed down the adjacent muddy pathway. When I asked him how they would move them he said manually, using leverage. I was thinking, it¢s a good job they are young: the task looked impossible to me. When I asked about funding, he told me they are fortunate on the southern end of the Long Trail because a lot of their funding comes from the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. The Northern part of the trail doesn¢t overlap the AT and they have to raise funds separately for it.We are in the Green Mountain Wilderness and Kerry decided that some English speaker mangled the French ¢Mont Vert¢ and came up with Vermont. Sounds plausible to me!At some point Cookie Monster stopped where we stopped for water. He¢s with the group of young people who stayed with us at the Cookie Lady¢s airplane hanger earlier this week. He asked us how old we were. When we told him he said he¢d met a lot of people in their 50s who regret not hiking when they were younger saying they¢re too old to do it now and had we encountered that? I told him that I thought it unlikely people that much younger than us would express such a sentiment to us. He told us he is 32 and used to be a chemist. He is from Wisconsin, but when he finishes the AT he plans to move to Colorado and look for work. He seemed quite nice, certainly more friendly than the first time we met him. That said, he walked on and took the camping spot for himself and his friends that we had been heading for. Of course, he didn¢t know that, it¢s just the way it works¢¦young people walk faster and get there first! Consequently, we are camping at a true stealth spot, complete with various tree roots and lumps for us to sleep on.It¢s supposed to rain tonight and into tomorrow. We don¢t have a phone signal here so Kerry walked a ways down the dirt road and found a signal so he could make a motel reservation, which thankfully, he did. This being the July 4 holiday and Manchester Center a tourist town, we were more than a little worried that we would be without a place to go in the rain.And have you noticed? No more Mountain Laurel.but we did see 2 garter snakes and 4 piles of moose poop!