Date: 2005-08-14
From: Upper Goose Pond, MA

To: Tom Leonard Lean-to, MA
Miles today: 21.1

21.1 miles todayTom Leonard Lean-to, Mass. I woke up at 5:30 this morning and got ready to walk up to the cabin for breakfast. I walked in at 6am just as Pete had the first batch of blueberry pancakes ready. I got my coffee and sat close to the kitchen. ;-))) I ended up eating 15 pancakes and could have probably eaten more, but I didn't want Pete to have to mix up more batter. These pancakes had a bunch of those blueberries that I picked yesterday in them and they tasted great. I said goodbye to everyone and went back to where I tented at and took my tent down and packed up. I started walking at 7:10. It was still very humid out and didn't take long before I was soaked again. The orange newts have finally made their appearance since the rain last night. I had only seen one up to late yesterday on the trail for this hike. I'm glad I didn't write about what I was going to a few days ago. I have only fallen once on this hike and it wasn't even while I was walking. I was barefoot in a stream when I fell before. Well, I fell walking today. I was going down and saw a rock sticking up and was able to turn and land on my backpack before I hit the rock. Guess I still don't have this walking thing down yet. ;-))) I found a nice spring 8 miles into my walk, so I sat down and ate an early lunch. I drank a couple litres of water and packed out 2 litres. Water is still hard to find, but there was a little more water in some of the streams today. It just didn't look like good drinking water. The bugs were out all day long again. I was constantly swatting mosquitos, deer flies and gnats. Sure will be nice when it cools down and those buggers go away. I climbed Mt Wilcox and walked by the north lean-to, but stopped at the southern one about 2 miles further. I signed the register and dried out my backpack a little in the sun. Nothing was drying earlier...even the leaves stayed wet until early afternoon. It was still very humid out though and my clothes ended up staying soaked all day. I hiked by a nice area called The Ledges. There were some nice dropoffs and there was some nice scenery. I was walking along looking around and didn't see a small stump in the middle of the trail and took my second fall of the day. I went forward and landed on my hands. Because I was so wet, I got really dirty with that fall. Kicking those stumps is partly how I got my trailname. :-))) I got down to Blue Hill Rd and it was so warm and humid I was thinking to myself about how nice it would be if there was a cooler full of ice cold cokes...there wasn't any. :-((( I walked about another 2 minutes and saw a nobo by the name of Nimblefoot sitting down. I saw him take a drink of a soda and thought to myself that he must have packed it out of town and is going to sit there and drink it in front of me. I REALLY wanted a coke. I got closer and saw a cooler sitting next to him. Woohoo!!! :-))) There was a sign on top of the cooler that said it was from Spruce Trap and Winter Clown and it also said; "Leave 1 coke for Stumpknocker." Wow, I can't thank you enough Spruce Trap and Winter Clown...that trail magic came at a time that I really needed it...and the sign with my name on it was a special treat...thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! I took a picture of the sign and will post it on my journal as soon as I can...thanks. One of the nobos I talked to this morning had come from East Mountain Retreat today. He said he ordered pizza and had it delivered there. I had been trying to decide if I wanted to walk the 2 miles off the trail to the retreat or not all day. When I got to Rt 23, I decided to hitch and decide on where I was going after I talked to the driver. A guy by the name of Laird picked me up and asked where I was going. I said either to East Mountain Retreat or maybe Great Barrington if he thought there was a good restaurant open today. He told me about a pizza place downtown which was further than I really wanted to go, but I went anyway. When I got out of the car, I saw it was closed, so I walked back to a pizza place I saw on the way in. It was about half a mile back and when I got there, I ordered a small Greek salad, small pizza with muchrooms, spinach and...of course, anchovies. I got a coke too. It turned out to be really good. It started raining hard while I was in the restaurant, so I ended up staying there about 2 hours. When the rain stopped, I headed back towards Rt 23. The only thing I really needed was enough coffee to get me to Salisbury, Ct. I didn't want to walk the half mile to the grocery store, so I stopped in a small convenience store. On the way inside, I met a guy by the name of Patrick and he asked how the trail was treating me. I told him it was great and then yogied a ride back to the trail...all before we even got into the store. ;-))) I got real lucky because the store had small packs of Columbian coffee, so I bought 2, figuring that would do for 2 days. Patrick dropped me off at the trailhaed on Rt 23. I almost had him drop me off on Buell Rd so I could go to the retreat, but with the rain, it was a little cooler, so I decided I'd rather sleep in my tent tonight. I walked 2 more miles to Tom Leonard Lean-to and was surprised that no one else was there. Since I needed water, I set up my tent and walked a long way down the hill and got enough water to get me through coffee and about 10 miles in the morning. I hear there's a farm store on Rt 7 that I can get water at tomorrow. I'm writing this entry in my tent and it's raining and thundering very hard out right now...glad I'm in here. :-)))The nobos I met today were Badger, Backtrack, Mr Fusion, Stinger, Tweeter, Terrapin, Bubble Boy, Domino, Nimblefoot and Crampus.Good night...