Date: 2003-09-10
From: Tom Leonard Shelter

To: East Mountain Retreat
Miles today: 3.5

start Tom Leonard Shelterdestination East Mountain RetreatI woke up his morning at 5:30. I waited and waited for the sun to come up, hoping for a great sunrise! It didn't happen, but there was still a nice view of the sun coming up. I drank my tea, and watched the morning wake up. In talking with other hikers who were in the shelter last night, it seemed that the noise Mudbutt and I heard last night, and thought it was a hiker hunting the privy, it was actually a moose! Too bad we didn't have strong enough lights to shine into the darkness last night! Of course had we shined our lights last night we probably would have gotten a shot of some hiker's backside with his pants down around his knees! If anyone was to plot our hike on a graph, it would look like a four year olds color picture. Up, down,over, north, south, east, west, then north all over again. Last night when we went to bed, we had our hiking plans made for the next two weeks. A good night's sleep and a side trip back into town changed all of that. Mudbutt and I decided to hike into the East Mountain Hostel for the night. We were mostly curious about the setting. I almost fell out of my tent laughing when Mudbutt said she wanted to go check out the retreat, she wanted some peace and quiet!!Without walking? I asked. So back toward town we hiked. We got to the retreat and unloaded our packs. We tried to ride the two bikes that were offered to us for a trip into town, but we were like two midgets trying to ride them. Our legs were way to short to safely reach the pedals. Since we did not want to end this hike with broken arms, legs or necks, we decided to try and hitch a ride into town three miles away for lunch. We were picked up by a lady shortly and dropped off in town. We headed to the 20 Railroad Tavern for burgers. Then we went across the street for a huge serving of ice cream. It was on the way out after lunch that our plans made a drastic ninty degree turn. It started with Mudbutt seeing a poster advertising the Eddie from Ohio Band playing here this Friday. This is absolutely without a doubt her favorite band. After calling around for tickets, she as told to just be waiting outside the door on Friday night and hopefully she would get in on a standing room only status. So....on Friday she is taking me back up to New Hampshire and I will hike the rest of the White Mountains by myself. She will come back here for the concert, then meet up with her brother for a short visit on Satuday. From there she is not sure what she is doing, but next week she will meet up with me and we will head somewhere to hike. It was hard for me to make this decision to hike without Mudbutt, but I really enjoyed hiking the part of the Whites that I did, and for so long on this hike I would climb mountains and sweat and ache all the while telling myself that this is getting me ready for the Whites. Also, since the weather has been so great, I want to take advantage of it and go ahead and hike the Whites. With that decided we walked to the other end of town and picked up my car. Back at the retreat, we had some explaining to do on why we had a car. The hostess told us that she would not have allowed us to stay there if she had of known we had a car. I still do not beleive she heard a word we said, but she let us stay only the provision that we park the car down the hill out of sight. So here we are back in Great Barrington once again. Maybe there is a prize for the longest attempt at hiking the trail in one season. I bet we would win!!! We were joined tonight by a south bounder named Tortoise. We decided to call and order pizza for supper. We sat around the table with Tortoise filling me in on what the rest of the White's holds for me, while we gave him all the great places he was going to see heading south. Four slices of pizza, six wings, and two Subway cookies later, I crawl into bed, feeling like a tick, a well fed tick. total miles 3.5