Date: 2013-08-01
From: Kay Wood Lean-to

To: Church Hostel, Cheshire, MA
Miles today: 11.9
Weather: light rain

I didn't wake up till almost 6:00. I discovered that the people in the shelter were a Southbound woman from RI & a father & third-grade son heading North. I saw them later in Dalton. They are going 6-7 miles a day, & the son will soon have completed the trail in Massachusetts. My first indication of who was tenting nearby was when their dog, Mulkie, came over to beg some of my breakfast. It was Trouble, 2-Socks, Zen Master, Canadian Bacon, & Kodiak, all of whom I've seen a lot of in the past few days. It was mostly downhill into Dalton. When I went by Tom's place (He let's hikers stay in his yard), I thought it looked a lot neater than last time -- no hiker junk evident from the street. I was passed by a fast thru-hiker who had stayed there & then stopped at a restaurant with a bunch of backpacks outside -- the same group from the shelter. Most of the breakfast items were eggy things on a bagel or wrap. They couldn't do the ones involving broccoli, so I ordered the Greek one. No black olives; I got it anyway for the Feta cheese. While we were eating, the legendary Miss Janet arrived, with some treats. She used to have a hostel in Erwin, TN, but now just roams up & down the Trail helping hikers. When I had looked up the zip code for Dalton, I had discovered that the town had 01226 & one other user had 01227. Must be a big company!   After breakfast, we crossed the bridge & went by a factory. We learned that it makes high quality papers, including the special paper US (& some other) currency is printed on. Soon we passed the Methodist church I had visited when I came thru Dalton 11 years ago. They had just gotten a new pastor from some oriental country. The present pastor's name looked oriental too ... wonder if it's the same one. The church is at least partly Richardson Romanesque in architecture, & going farther down the street I observed that the city hall is also. It seems like a very large building for a small town, but it also houses the library, which didn't open till noon. That worked out OK. I walked down to the pharmacy, found out that the grocery store was 1.5 miles down the road (so i rejected the idea of going there), picked up my mail drop & spent over an hour deciding what to take with me & what to send on, & talked for a while with Susan. By then, the library was open. I got on a computer to work in trail journals, but the first 20 minutes got wiped out when Windows decided to "reconfigure" something. If I have to do something over while I can still remember what I had written, sometimes it even improves. I don't know about this time. Mostly it used up much of my allotted time. I wanted to get going by 2:00 so I could get to Cheshire at a reasonable time. I got a "grinder", as they call sub sandwiches here, & left town by 2:30. Actually, there is quite a bit of walking on city streets on both ends of this section. The Trail goes up over several hills, past Crystal Mtn campground, to a rocky hillside called "The Cobbles", overlooking Cheshire. The rain that had started before I left the library continued most of the way. Along the way, I met a couple of day hikers & 2 slack-packers, Aqua man & Grinch, heading South from Greylock to Dalton. Coming down the final hill, it was as dark at 7:15 as it had been at 8:15 last night, but by then the rain had stopped. I found the hostel at Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church. I've heard of churches with the name "'Assumption of Mary" -- don't know why this is different. Only Kodiak & 2 people I haven't met were here (later discovered to be Sparky & his daughter Orange Peel, from Iowa [not many mid-Westerners on the Trail]]); the others had decided to go to a motel instead. It wasn't that bad if you don't mind sleeping on the parish hall floor. I explored the town a bit, helping the local economy by buying several food items to eat while I was here. More rain during the night, but it's supposed to be over by morning.