Date: 2003-08-02
From: The Lookout

To: Thistle Hll Shelter
Miles today: 14.0
Weather: light rain

We woke up early hoping to catch a sunrise from the observation deck, but it was still too foggy and rainy for any pretty skies, so we slept a few more hours and then packed up. We ate lots, since we had already decided to go into South Pomfrey for food today.        It was foggy and wet, but not raining, so although we had no views, it was very nice cool hiking weather and the wet forests and fields were beautiful. The cool weather and rain seemed to have triggered all the fungus in the forest to shoot up mushrooms and Ned soon became impatient with me as I stopped to examine a good number of them. I couldn¢t help myself! So many species I¢d never seen, and so many young mushrooms - young ones are easier to study and identify than old ones, and I¢m definitely still a novice.        Somewhere in the late morning we came to a stile over an electric fence. The fence was clearly marked as ELECTRIC, yet I was the only one to use the stile. Both the boys stepped over unharmed, though. So, there we were, safely on the other side of the electric fence, and Carsten decides to see if it¢s on. He touches it briefly, apparently feels nothing, so he touches it longer and in the same motion jumps two feet with an expression I would pay to have on film. Silly, silly Carsten.        After the fence fiasco, we crossed VT Route 12 and saw a cooler. TRAIL MAGIC? No. Nasty Trash? Yes! Disappointed, we ate the rest of our snacks - only 1.5 miles to town food. While we were snacking an older couple came up for a day hike. They were in good shape! It was a long, steep incline and the gentleman kept up with us with plenty of breath to talk to Carsten about West Point stuff. Also along the steep incline were (surprise) tons of cool mushrooms, including loads of Amanita Carsaria, a beautiful big red mushroom, not edible, but really neat to look at. It was along this incline that Flanders became so frustrated with mushroom study that he sprinted ahead and left Carten and me in the dust. We didn¢t see him again until the road to town, but in the meantime we struck GOLD! Golden chanterelles, that is. Beautiful, delicious Chanterelles! We collected them and then hurried along to catch poor frustrated Flanders.        We stashed our packs in the woods and then began walking to town. (It seemed a bad road for hitching.) We were almost there when I got a hitch, so we saved maybe 5 minutes of walking. Teago¢s General Store serves this small skiing community, and hikers. It was probably one of the friendliest stores we¢ve been to. We ate awesome subs, ice cream, and bought butter to fry up our chanterelles. Carsten washed his socks. Then we walked back to the trail, fixed up Carsten¢s blisters and headed for the roller coaster that would be the rest of our day. The woods continued to be beautiful AND FULL OF CHANTERELLES!! We collected more despite Flander¢s complaints that we were going to poison ourselves. Carsten muddied his socks again within 15 minutes.        We arrived at Thistle Hill Shelter and were soon joined by Boat. Carten had made chamomile tea and we shared it with Boat. I cooked a couple bites of chanterelles to eat to make sure they didn¢t make us sick. As soon as we tasted them, I knew they were the real thing - a true delicacy! Boat had done his own collecting - Bergamot leaves. He made tea with them and shared it with us - DELICIOUS! Then Carsten started frying the fresh red potatoes we obtained from Teago¢s. He left about an inch of BURN in the bottom of our pan, but the taters were good. It was an awesome evening - between the bergamot tea and chanterelles and fresh taters, we were living the high life. Even Flanders agreed - chanterelles are gooood!                                                        Chicken Feet