Date: 2014-06-29
From: Cobble Road

To: Glen Brook Shelter
Miles today: 13.9
Weather: light rain

The transition from town to the trail is always interesting - you never know what the trail is going to bring you on a given day! Three big climbs interspersed with trail magic and some good looking girls and some good looking views! Woke up after a great sleep and stripped the bed and packed the bag. Big Dawg and I made a good breakfast in Maria's kitchen - each of us were allotted three eggs, OJ, and a banana which we supplemented with Gatorade, Poptarts, and strawberries. We ate with Purple Pants and Don's Brother while they decided their course of action. Since he had not left yet and we were ready to go, Don's Brother took us back to cemetery to start our hiking day. This saved us a little walking back to the trail and it was very nice of him to help us out yesterday and this morning!The trail warmed us up with a little field walk before taking us back into a nice forest area. Of course no hike on the AT is complete without steep climbs and some rocks so the trail took us on nice wooded path as well as the nice rocky climbs - we had a little of everything so far this morning!The climb from the road led us to Lions Head and a nice view of CT from up high - it was a steep climb up to his head and luckily we did not get caught in the mane! Rested here while Big Dawg recovered some - he was pretty sore from hiking yesterday with his full pack after slacking for three days.From the Lions Head up to Bear Mountain (the CT one!) we ran into many day or weekend hikers coming from the two shelters close together before the mountain - the shelters are oddly close together! It was neat talking with some of the people we passed and we even reached 1500 miles today - it was a great feeling!A rest at the second shelter and then we tackled the climb up Bear Mountain. It was not a bad climb but did have a couple hard bits on the way up. The top of the mountain rewarded us with a view from a stone "tower" (pile of stones that were stacked a little bit nicer) and then an extremely steep down to the start of Sages Ravine. I understand we were going down into a ravine, but this descent was ridiculously steep and rocky - about as steep as the climb down to Port Clinton! Two day hikers were coming up that side with a beagle on a leash - I would be very impressed if the dog made it up there on that side!At the start of Sages Ravine we ran into a good looking girl with a dog sitting by the trail. We chatted with her while we rested from our descent and found out that she thru-hiked last year and was doing trail magic with some friends down the trail. We wished her luck and headed down to her the other members of the group - a guy and a girl. The other girl was also very pretty and we had a nice talk with both of them while enjoying a brownie and some strawberries. As we were leaving we found out their names: Rooster (guy), Pancakes (second girl), and Cricket (first girl).Sages Ravine was very cool to walk along but also a little buggy! There were nice little waterfalls along the length of the walk and also several swimming holes that would have been great on a very hot day. We also entered our eleventh state right around the ravine - from CT to MA!Conquered the ravine and rested at a MA campsite for lunch - tent pads make great tables. Here we met an older gentleman who was doing a section from CT into the White Mountains. He had thru-hiked five years ago and had a hiking stave with many pins attached to it - like my hat!From lunch we continued up to Race Mountain and had an extremely nice exposed ridge walk overlooking the valley below - it was great to see it for so long! A lot of good views in CT and MA! We enjoyed the scenic walk all the way to the summit where we met the older gentleman again while he was resting. Talked with him some more while we rested and found out he writes poetry instead of journals - he told us one of his simple poems and it was a good one!Climbed down to the bottom of the hill in order to make the climb up Everett that much more fun - boy what a steep climb that was! With rocks everywhere it felt like we were prepping for NH - which is coming up shortly! We did not have a great view when we got to the top but we sat up there relishing our accomplishment and resting for the last stretch of the day. The many climbs had us moving slowly throughout the day but the last walk to the shelter was much quicker. We ran into some trail magic by the pond (water jugs on the picnic tables) and continued on our way to the shelters. Decisions decisions! Which shelter to choose? We decided to go with the second one since it made tomorrow just a little shorter and it was closer to a water source.At the other shelter we set up our hammocks and settled in. We met a gentleman who used to live in Greenwood, IN and we met Taz who started his hike several years ago and was chipping away at it. We also met a gentleman who was flying to Indianapolis tomorrow to drive up to Fishers to see his daughter's first child - his first grandson!We ate dinner and gathered wood for a campfire. We walked down to the actual shelter and ran into four hikers staying there for the evening. Little Flipper was doing a flip flop hike starting in CT going north while Tumbles, Stitch, and Superman were going southbound for some distance. We chatted with them for a while then got a fire going (MA allows those - woohoo!) up by our camp.We had some late arrivals come in looking for a tent spot so we moved off the tent pad near the fire ring and let them set up. It was a gentleman by the name of Joe and his young daughter Cadence out for a few days on her first backpacking trip! They are from near Boston (you could tell from Joe's accent) and Joe runs a youth wilderness program for inner city kids. He uses the trail in MA a lot for his wilderness programs - very neat! They shared the fire and we had a great evening swapping stories and talking about hiking.Bed time - long day tomorrow!