Date: 2012-06-16
From: Cooper Lodge

To: Clarendon Shelter
Miles today: 10.9
Weather: clear sky

Last night was cold. The campsite was at just a couple hundred feet below the 4000' Killington peak and after a gorgeous sunset it was a cold clear night. I woke at about 2am chilled, and when I hadn't fallen back to sleep by 3 realized it wasn't going to happen unless I warmed up. I dug around in my clothes bag for my fleece hat, buff for around my neck and primaloft jacket. With these added and my sleeping bag velcroed up I was toasty again until the light woke me up just before 5. It was still cool this morning and the extra clothes stayed on till right before hiking time. I thought it was just me, but the first hiker I met this morning also commented how chilly it was for the middle of June. Once the sun was up it got warm and sticky though.Killington was the last 4000' + mountain for me until much further south in Virginia. The southern or downhill side. Also marked the 500 miles of contiguous AT hiked, obviously only 40 or so on this trip so far.I walked much farther than the AT miles listed above today. First I strayed about 1/2 mile off trail by misleading "detour" signs, then re-walked that back to the original point when the detour just didn't feel right. Then I walked an extra mile on a 2.5 mile road walk detour round a 1.5 mile stretch of trail damaged by Hurricane Irene last year. Then at the end of the day, arriving at the shelter I realized that my bandanna had slipped off my pack sometime in the last half mile, so I left my pack and walked back about 1/4 mile to retrieve it. Yes, losing a $1 bandanna is serious business on this quest.Speaking of bandannas, the most important thing mine did today was act as a swab when I fell flat on my face and thought I'd broken my nose. I was walking downhill on a dirt road when I broke my own rule of not looking sideways while walking forwards, and down I went: knees hit the ground first, then chest, then my face whiplashed down with my upper lip and nose making very hard contact with the dirt, and some very discomforting noises. I thought at first I'd knocked out my front teeth and broken my nose, but when I finally got myself disentangled from the pack and upright was amazed to find only a fat lip, a gushing bleeding nose, and a small cut where my glasses had dug into my nose, but my teeth and glasses intact. The only way to figure out how bad I was hurt was to take a photo of myself to use as a mirror. It's not pretty, and I knew you'd rather see butterflies instead. Bandanna saved the day by swabbing up the blood, and later down at the brook by acting as a cold compress. Between that and a couple of ibuprofen taken immediately after the fall and regularly since the swelling was minimal and has mainly gone down, so I'm sure nothing is broken, but I hope you can understand how I couldn't abandon the bandanna. The highlight of the day was definitely the butterflies. When I first saw them there were 4 in the road. As I put the camera away after getting a photo another flew down, and this repeated until there were 9 for the last shot. It was definitely a better part of the roadwalk detour than the previous experience.I'm sleeping in the shelter tonight, against my better judgment because it is very buggy, but I was just too lazy to put up the tent. Just before dark the shelter maintainer Steve and his wife Hilleen showed up for a while to check the shelter. It's pretty here there is freshly cut grass, and potted plants. I thanked them for what they do, and they took my trash for me. Very sweet couple.Anyway the bugs are swarming, time to duck under cover.(Note butterfly photo will be added when my phone has charge)