Date: 2013-08-06
From: Stratton Pond shelter

To: Manchester Center, Vt
Miles today: 10.7
Weather: broken clouds

I woke up about 5:30 without an alarm. There was one other person getting going at the same time. He was urging his partner to get up too, which happened very slowly. I didn't know either of them. It's a large shelter, with a loft. I came in in the dark & left before it as very light, so I didn't know who was there except Beer Goddess, who came in about the same time I did. What makes it different in the shelters now is that it's not just one bunch of people moving Northward together; there are hikers going in both directions on both the AT & the LT. I remembered some confusion getting out of this place last time, & it happened again. At the end of the .2-mile trail to the shelter, the AT/LT starts out going South for NOBOs & North for SOBOs. But to make it more complicated, the separate trail around the pond gets tangled in there too. Even knowing all that, I took a wrong turn & had to backtrack to get going right. The Trail goes around one end of Stratton Pond, with some nice views, but it's pretty full of rocks & roots, so it wasn't very fast. I thought when I started at 6:15, I could do the 10.7 miles to the road by noon & have a whole half day Manchester Center, since it didn't look very hilly & was mostly downhill. There were a lot more ups & downs than showed on my map, so I wasn't very fast. Also, I stopped several times to do trail maintenance. In one case, several hikers came thru while I was working, & two of them thanked me. Most of the down trees on this area are beech, & I'm finding it's very easy wood to cut. A few of the hikers I'd been with yesterday passed me -- I don't know what happened to the rest. Orange Peel & her dad re-appeared -- I thought they were ahead of me now. They had stayed at the Spruce Peak shelter ¢ originally built for work crews, it still had a wood stove inside [it certainly hadn't seemed cold enough last night]. I keep finding Patchouli's name in shelter registers about a half day ahead of me, but I haven't caught up with her yet ( probably won't unless she stops in town too). I also met a father & daughter from Rhode Island doing the LT. Traffic moves quite fast on Rt 11, so it took a while to hitch a ride. The woman who stopped told me about a lot of places as we went past them but took me to where she was going, the book store. Not a bad location, but without a map, I did a lot of wandering. Four different people gave me three different directions to the library -- as far as I could tell they were all wrong. I had hoped to stay at Green Mountain House hostel, which provides a lot of services for a reasonable price & is one of those iconic places along the Trail. They were full because of the Warrior Hikers (who I didn't know were even in the area), so I ended up at Suttons, which provides just a room in a central location for more money. Manchester Center is a strange town in that it has been taken over by outlet stores (all the familiar ones plus many brands I've never heard of). It means the downtown is busy, but the more "normal" stores (& the post office & the library) are really spread out. I found both outfitter stores, a supermarket, & health food store and then ended up at a nice restaurant [Ye Olde Tavern] that Mr Sutton had recommended. That was excellent. Just after placing my order, I remembered to run back to Mtn Goat Outfitter, where Susan had sent a mail drop, a big, heavy package I'll have to sort in the morning.