Date: 2008-08-14
From: Open field one mile N of Thistle Hill Shelter, VT

To: Hanover, New Hampshire
Miles today: 14.3

I'm in New Hampshire!! Well, I'm there on the Trail, but Mrs Gorp picked me up at the food co-op on the far end of Hanover and brought me back to Wallingford, VT for the Long Trail Festival going on this weekend. I should see lots of friends there. :-) I woke up at 4:40am and stuck my JetBoil stove outside the tent and got my coffee to brewing. I made 24.3 ounces of fine tasting coffee and ate a few nuts while I sipped the coffee and started packing up for an early start today. I wanted to walk 4 miles and eat at the deli in West Hartford this morning. I got out and started taking down my tent when I noticed a lot of ripe blackberries all around me. It was fairly dark when I stopped walking last night and I didn't notice them while I was setting up my tent. I walked over and picked about three hands full of those extra sweet blackberries and ate those to supplement the nuts I had earlier. I finished packing up and was walking north on the Appalachian Trail at 6am. You are looking at the Appalachian Trail...yep, it goes right through all those weeds!I was walking along and spotted a deer just about the time that deer spotted me. She took off running. I saw where she had been in the Trail when she ran off...she kicked up some dirt when she took off. :-) Now that's my kind of overlook...when the fog lifts. :-) I finished walking to West Hartford. There are lots of small 400 to 700 foot ups and downs in this area of VT. I ended up losing about 1,200 feet of elevation along the way. I walked into West Hartford Village Store at 7:40am and ordered their "Big Breakfast". I had two eggs over easy, real homefries, bacon, rye toast and two pancakes...and a large Joe Cool coffee. I've eaten there each year I walked through except two years it had closed down, and I have to say that this was by far the best it's ever been. :-) There was an older guy sitting there having breakfast, so I started talking to him. He was probably in his 70's and said he was a farmer and still living in the same house he was born in. Wow!! He headed out and I was just getting ready to leave when Flame Thrower walked in. I had seen him since southern PA. He said he had to get off to attend a wedding and that this was his first day back. I had about a 1,200 foot climb in the next 3 1/2 miles up to the summit of Griggs Mtn. That climb went just a little slower after that BIG breakfast. :-) Now there's some blazing that I have no idea what it means I went to Happy Hill Shelter and ran into 3 sobos just getting up...at 10am!! Their names are Juice Box, Water Baby and Swing. We talked for about 10 minutes and Flame Thrower walked up just as I was leaving. That's twice I left today when he showed up. ;-) I had another 1,200 foot descent into Norwich, VT. That was about five miles away and once again, it wasn't all downhill. There were plenty of small ups too. I stopped at a small stream just before I got to the road to clean the mud off me. Flame Thrower passed by and said he was clean enough. I rinsed my shirt out too, then headed on out to the road. I ran into a sobo by the name of Foot Note just after I started that road walk. He had quite a hiking pole...homemade and had what looked like a knife blade on the bottom of it. It had to be a dull knife blade because I could see it had been in the mud a lot. We talked a few minutes and I continued on...passing through Norwich, VT, then crossing the Connecticut River and into Hanover, NH at noon. I stopped half way across the bridge and took a picture of one of my hiking poles in VT and the other one allllllll the way over in NH. ;-) I stopped to say hello to Pamela as I passed by the first tree in NH. <3I walked through Hanover....busy, busy Hanover. That's a hard place to walk into when it's so busy after you just come out of the woods. I was glad Mrs Gorp was coming to pick me up...I didn't have to stop anywhere. I just kept walking and got to the food co-op on the far side of town and Mrs Gorp showed up about 20 minutes later. Even she was a little stressed by all the traffic and people. It's a good town for a hiker to stop and have a meal, resupply, but then get the heck out of Dodge!! :-) It was great seeing Mrs Gorp again...and so soon after the last time I saw her. She has really become a close friend over the last few years. I treated her to a seafood lunch. She had a bowl of fish chowder, then the special lobster roll and I had a fried seafood platter. When Mrs Gorp finished her plate, she started picking out the scallops off my plate. I looked up and her cheeks were puffed out like a chipmunk. She swallowed those and came back after the rest of my scallops. They must have been really good!! :-) She made up for it tonight though. She made some spaghetti and angel hair pasta and it was delicious!! I really wasn't feeling very hungry for dinner, but ended up having two large plates of that spaghetti...bet my cheeks were puffed out like a chipmunks then. ;-) I forgot to mention that my ol' buddy Chief left a message on my cell phone yesterday saying that it was raining hard down there in VA and he and Xmas were huddled under the overhang of a woman's bathroom near a visitor's center somewhere along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Sure am glad they went down there...it's been nice and sunny up here. ;-) Another great day on the Appalachian Trail. :-)