Date: 2008-10-04
From: Dandby, VT

To: end of NH-Vermont
Miles today: 0.0

After enjoying the Huts in the Whites and our stop at the Linehans, we had the privilege to stay at ¢Chets¢ in Lincoln New Hampshire. Chet or Chester is an amazing man who takes in hikers and has turned his whole garage and half his house into a hikers Hostel. Chet used to be an avid hiker until 7 years ago when a hiker stove blew up in his face and sent him into an 8 month coma. He woke up with the inability to walk and nearly blind but that has yet to stop his influence on the trail and his passion for hiking. He takes in hikers for free and lets them stay in his house and use his kitchen, laundry and shower. He also provided Phil and I with bikes to cruise around the town of Lincoln. He let us stay for two nights and slack packed us for about 20 miles through the end of the whites. It was a lot of fun to stay with Chet and appreciate just how he loves life and hikers even after all he has been through. So after the white mountains ended, the trail has really become nice. The feels like a highway with its rolling hills and wide paths compared to the White Mountains where half the time we were struggling up these sheer rock faces. We stopped in Hanover which was cool because the trail goes straight through the middle of a town and Dartmouth college. We stayed there for a weekend with one of phil¢s lacrosse buddies from college. The Petersons took us into their house and showed us tremendous hospitality feeding us delicious meals and a bed to sleep in. Every day, we would wake up to the smell of fresh home made bread coming out of the oven. Phil and I easily ate about two loaves each. Thanks a bunch to the Petersons for opening their house to use in Hanover. We have finally made it into Vermont. Two states down, eleven more and 1600 miles to go. Vermont is absolutely amazing. The trail is like a highway going through rolling hills, open fields, and wide farm land with cows and sheep grazing in the field. The foliage is also amazing so it is absolutely beautiful to walk through it all. We happened to come across one of these fields and as we were enjoying the scenery, we walked passed this lonely tree in the middle of the field. I looked up and yelled to Phil, ¢Apples!!¢. We had come across a massive apple tree loaded with ripe apples. We immediately threw off our packs and devoured as many apples as we could handle. Then we noticed that the most biggest shiniest juicy apples were on the top of the tree so Phil climbed up and selected the most prestigious apples and threw them down to me. We hiked the final couple miles with about 5 more pounds of apples on our backs and that night, we made apple crisp. Now I¢m not trying to boast about our amazing cooking skills but we made some good trail apple crisp so we figured we could share our recipe for all the enjoy.         Ingredients        10 freshly picked apples        12 cup of cinnamon maple oatmeal        3 cups granola        3 cups water        Preparation. 1.        Slice and peal all the apples into bite size chunks(this was quiet difficult using only a spoon but we managed)2.        Boil apples in water until soft and squishy. Should look like chunky apple sauce. 3.        Add in oatmeal and a cup of granola to apples mix and boil till most of the water evaporates out.4.        add the rest of the granola on top for crust and bake until golden brownNow we must admit, adding some sugar, butter and a scoop of ice cream would really make this recipe but if you want a healthy alternative, try our trail version.   Another day, we were enjoying the Vermont trail and scenery when we came across a group of about 10 elderly British folks. They had come over from England to enjoy the beautiful Vermont Foliage. As we were hiking by them, one lady asked us if we were thru-hikers hiking the entire Appalachian Trail. I told her yes and she stopped and yelled to everyone in the group in her British accent, ¢We found one! A real thru-hiker. We found one!¢ I was shocked when they all stopped their walk through the beautiful Vermont woods and stared at us in amazement. I was even more shocked when they took out their cameras and started snapping pictures of us. I never realized Phil and I were such tourist attractions for foreigners in America. I¢m still not sure if they thought we were celebrities or a rare species of animal only found in American closely related to big foot with our shaggy hair and beards and rancid hiker stench. Either way, we were soaking up our 5 minutes of fame posing for pictures and answering these peoples questions like this happens to us all the time. I really wouldn¢t be surprised if we ended up in a British newspaper with the reaction we got from these people. So we are finally at our cabin up in New York enjoying some good family time and some rest off the trail. We have been looking forward to this for a while so I¢m just going to get off my feet, hang out with the fam and munch down on some of grandmas delicious cookies=) -Nate