Date: 2016-09-15
From: kid gore shelter

To: bennington
Miles today: 14.4

This is the first town in vt that matches my idea of vt. It's a quaint little town with 3 breweries, friendly people, cool scenery, etc. I woke up around 530 and watched a great sunrise from the picnic table. It must've been close to in the 30's so some hot coffee was glorious. I love the pre sunrise colors where it's orange on black still. The miles were pretty quick and there wasn't much in the way of waypoints. I found out from a bartender later that it's the longest stretch of uninterrupted trail, I guess including woods and fire roads etc. There was a cool fire tower about 4 miles in that had great views. We got some cell service so facetimed with our parents for a bit who are actually together in the smokies. Kates mom sent us a good pic of her on the appalachian trail. She's only got like 300 miles to springer! Forgot how close the smokies are to the end. I came down a steepish rock hop to the river and hitching road and found dale unsuccessfully trying to hitch into town. We were both going to the Catamount motel so we called them with the sliver of service and they were nice enough to come shuttle us. Right after we called too a long trail hiker came out of the woods, also going there. It was nice to have an instant ride in. We got a shower and headed to Madison brewery in town. Really cool spot and talked to a bunch of super friendly people. Locals, at/LT hikers, bartenders, and a cyclist guy headed to a bluegrass festival in williamstown just down the road. The trail goes right through the middle of there and a town called north adams. Kate and I think we stopped in North adams on our way skiing once and remember it being really cool. The kicker though is that this guy informed me that Williams college is in williamstown, so I actually lived there a couple months one summer abut 12 years ago! I had it in my mind that Williams was in Williams and so must be somewhere else. My girlfriend at the time was doing a math undergrad research thing there, and I stayed with her in the dorms. I had a cushy research job too for this university of Delaware professor studying matrices for the Penn dept. Of infectious diseases. A bad memory can be a fun thing sometimes. Makes for good surprises. Anyway this dude at the bar gave me his number and said we could crash at their place for the festival if we wanted. That's going to be pretty tempting walking through town I kind of lived in with a loosely bluegrass thing going on. We shall see, depends when we escape town tomorrow. After there we went to resupply and unfortunately the only walkable places were family dollar type stores. Those places are soul sucking hellholes. Halfway through shopping we realized were almost out if fuel and there's no place easy to get to to buy it, so we had to RE shop for no cooking, then ran into some hikers and before you know it we've been in there an hour and I'm hating life. It was freezing out and I was in a t shirt so I was grumping all the way back to the hotel. Luckily we passed an open door that looked like a cigar lounge and ended up being this really cool brewery called harvest. Marmalade and horizon passed by right as we were debating going in so we all went in for some delicious beer. The place was really cool. Antique furniture, ping pong, wall full of records and the bartender would play anyone we wanted. It was great to turn my mood back around.