Date: 2016-05-18
From: Warnet Hill

To: Wilbur Clearing Shelter 
Miles today: 26.0
Weather: scattered clouds

While we may not love the proximity to the roads and the habitual multiple daily crossing of them on this trail, we have decided that we do love going into the the towns for food and the easy accessibility of them. We have never been on any other trail with such ease of entrance into so many towns. Today we had not just one chance to pick up food and stuff our faces while we were at it but TWO. We decided that's our kind of through hiking!And the trail went right through both of them, we didn't have to hitch or do any extra road walking.   But let me start from the beginning.   We got up at our usual time of day and were on the trail by 6am.   We figured we had about 7.5 miles to the first town, Dalton. It was forested walking, uphill and down. The best part about that segment was the fact that we had overestimated the length of it, it was 6 miles. And let me assure you that when there is a discrepancy in mileage it is nearly always longer than we thought, Rarely will it will be shorter.   So that was nice.Dalton is a cool town, with huge houses from by gone years that have double wrap around porches and have been updated and remodeled without changing the air of the era. We loved strolling through town and looking at them. We went to the Cumberland Market and re supplied.   Then it was back on trail, which was still a town walk for some time, until we hit the forest. Along the way we met several pleasant people who wished us well. One of the guys we saw asked if we were through hikers.   We said yes, and he said , not far to go now, you're almost there. To which I replied, I guess, if you want to call over 600 miles almost there. We both laughed.   Then he said, well it's all down hill from here I promise. That's when I jokingly called him a liar. And so it was on our way to the next town. We had the usual forested walking with a lot of both uphill and downhill. There was 10 miles between Dalton and Cheshire and we knocked them off pretty quickly. It was pretty boggy as it has been, but the trail crews do a great job of building plank walkways so you don't have to slog through it. Very impressed with the trail in that aspect.   I liked the town of Cheshire most for its name. It reminds me of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland.   Well, second most after the food.As we were walking into town and heading towards the convenience store we passed a storage unit complex. A woman hurried towards us calling out, wait a minute, are you through hikers? When we said we were she got so excited! She had hiked a portion of the AT with her two sons. Her son had hiked the whole thing. His trail name was Weedeater, and hers was Elmer (think Elmer glue- she said she is the glue that holds the family together). She kindly offered to let us stay at her home, get cleaned up and do the laundry. Another act of kindness we didn't ask for or expect.   We were blown away. When we asked where here home was and how far it turned out to be 14 trail miles up and over Mt. Greylock in the town of Adams, MA. It was afternoon now and we had already hiked 16 miles. We still had to go to the convenience store and there was the matter of the over 2,500 feet of elevation gain that we had to climb to reach Mt. Greylock. Will regretfully told her we would probably not be able to make that many miles by tonight but we sure did appreciate the offer. As she was leaving she said we had made her day, she had been hoping to see some hikers she might be able to help. Wow! We had made her day? Well maybe we had, but she had definitely made ours with this amazing unsolicited offer of kindness. We walked on to the very touched by this encounter. Had it been less mileage we would have certainly dropped by her house. We resupplied and filled up on food at the store. Then we headed out for the big climb to Mt. Greylock. It was steep and long over several miles. I didn't know anything about Mt. Greylock before we started out. I'd never seen any pictures or read any literature about it. I was expecting the usual flat area with a view of the landscape below. But that was not what I received.   Mt. Greylock is a State Park it turns out. It is the highest point in Massachusetts.   There is a cool lodge right on the summit. There is also this huge, awesome Veterans memorial. It's shaped like a tower and has a really large globe of glass toward the top of it. I guess it was built right after World War I.   We went around the memorial to the lookout area. Here you found 3 large commercial binoculars.   The silver kind you put a quarter in. There was also a panoramic picture of what you were looking at, with everything labeled so you knew what you were seeing. And of course the view was spectacular. It seemed you could see forever. We left there and headed out, picking up the pace as it was now getting late. We had some downhill but also a short climb over Mt. Williams. We pushed on to the Wilbur Clearing Shelter making it there in our headlamps. A long day with two town stops and a cool mountain view eating into our hiking time. Not bad for our age group eh? Lol. Well, as you can imagine, I'm done in so I'll bid you a quick good night. Catch you later ! Road Runner