Date: 2004-10-27
From: My truck, Dalton, Mass.

To: Great Barrington, Mass.
Miles today: 19.0
Weather: overcast clouds

19 miles todaySleeping in my truckGreat Barrington, Mass.I was being lazy this morning and didn't want to get up and get ready to hike yet. I ended up getting up at 6:50am, only because I knew that Duff and Dells opened early for breakfast. Hippie and I went there and had a good breakfast to get us going for the hike today. We knew we had a short day, so niether one of us was really motivated. We drove to the trailhead at Lee, Mass. after breakfast and started hiking at 9:10am. It was another mild morning with temps only in the upper 30s. The sun was supposed to come out a little later in the day and the wind wasn't bad at all. We hiked north and when we got to October Mtn Shelter, we heard voices as we got closer. There were two young guys out for an overnight hike and one was holding a pitbull dog back. I was worried about that, but it turned out to be an 11 month old pup that only wanted to lick me to death. We stayed there for about half an hour before hiking on. I didn't like the looks of the water there, so we figured we would find some later. Hippie was out of water and I had about 8 ounces left. I got to hiking at a pretty fast pace and Hippie had to walk for a while and then jog to keep up. She always says she likes to hike like that, so I make her work at it when I can. She saw me lift the front of my hat to look for falling leaves to catch today and she said she didn't want to play that game today. We decided to let the leaf catching go for another day. Pretty soon, I heard her yell out; "50". I said I thought we weren't doing that today and she said that it fell right into her hand. I caught number 50 to tie it up again and she put me on "time out" for the rest of the day. We hiked on and remembered that the Cookie Lady lived nearby, so when we got to that road crossing, we walked down to her farm and filled up on water. We didn't get to see the Cookie Lady because she wasn't home, so we hiked on. We took a break 6.2 miles from Dalton, which was the end of our hike today and I left a few minutes before Hippie to start walking again. I was going along at my normal pace and I got to thinking how Hippie likes a challenge to catch up, so I started running. I ended up running about 4 miles of the last 6.2 and expected to see her come up on me anytime. She didn't. It took me a little over 1 1/2 hours to go that last section and I had to wait on her for another 25 minutes before she got to the truck. She said she started getting light headed coming up one of the mountains and had to sit down and eat a snickers bar...what a lite-weight!!! We have had lots of fun out here hiking the way we have the last week and a half. I think we would scare anyone else on the trail if they saw us running down the trail like that or running through the woods catching leaves, but there's not hardly anyone left out here right now. We stopped at a sub shop in town and grabbed a couple sandwiches and then headed over to Lee to see if Rainy Jay might be there. He wasn't, but Dharma was!! He was sitting on the tailgate of his truck just waiting on us to get back. He said he saw from my journal where we were and decided that since it was only an hour away, he would come out and see us. He's wearing cotton these days and he's making re-entry slowly. He looks good and has been able to keep his weight about the same since he summited on Sept. 11th of this year. He decided to spend the night with us tonight, so he followed us to Great Barrington trailhead and we found some level sites to park the trucks. I had to move a little dirt around for my truck and add a few rocks under Dharma's tires, but they are sitting pretty level. We got out the Long Trail Ales that we've been carrying to celebrate Hippie's completion of the Long Trail on her A.T. thru hike this year. We've been carrying them for a while, but have been to tired to think about a celebration of any kind at night. When the sun goes down, it's time to go to sleep, so the beers have been sitting in the truck aging. I crawled into my truck after 7pm and wrote my journal for the day, while Hippie and Dharma caught up on trail talk. There's suppose to be an eclipse tonight, but I think I'll miss it. I saw another entry from Heald in the register today and he's only 11 days ahead of me right now. I may still see him on the trail again this year. I haven't seen another thru hiker on the trail since I started walking south out of Glencliff, NH twelve days ago. Another great day on the A.T.