Date: 2013-07-16
From: About 1494

To: Sages Ravine Campsite
Miles today: 9.1

We made it through the night without anyone getting knocked on the head with falling tree limbs. The hike down to US 44 was steep but the walk into town was only four tenths of a mile. Monk kept going as he has to be in Great Barrington, MA to catch a bus on Wednesday morning. Cash and I arrived in Salisbury, CT at 8am and found a bistro open and we ate breakfast inside. Baltimore (not Jack) joined us. Baltimore is retired and this hike will make his fourth time. Why, I asked, would you do this over and over again? He said after two years you start to miss it. You forget the bad stuff - bugs, heat, rocks, the pains and you¢ll remember the good stuff - the towns, the people, the views. (Oh no!) The bistro is the only place open; everything else opens at ten. After breakfast we went to the grocery store, the pharmacy and then to the first public funded library in the USA. The longer we¢re here the more hikers come into town. We¢re everywhere, like buzzards flying over road kill. It is just too hot, so Cash and I have decided to stick around here and hob knob with the rich locals. There are a lot of movie stars living here we¢re told. We are planning to leave around five and hike till we can't hike no more. We find this table in a courtyard, right behind the pharmacy. I'm sitting there using free wi-fi from the coffee shop when this lady walks by and says, ¢I bet it¢s hot out there hiking.¢ I say, ¢Yes ma'am, it¢s killing me.¢ Five minutes later she comes back and hands me a box of chocolate chip cookies and says, ¢Here enjoy them.¢ I say thank you as she is walking away. From my seat I can see the bank forty feet away, the bistro forty feet away, the grocery store twenty feet away and a book store fifty feet away. This town is old (1741) and everything is all in one area; it¢s not all spread out. As the day goes on, more hikers come into town, some I've never seen. A couple of days ago I met Green Bean who had started her hike on May 6th. Well now I've met this kid that started May 11th and has only taken one zero. I had to walk away and go bang my head on a tree for awhile! Big Red and his gang show up and hang out too. I've been here all freaking day and I'm getting antsy to hike but when I step out into the sunlight, all I can say is, ¢Damn it¢s hot!¢ So I wait and I wait. I keep looking at my watch for that magical number, five. One by one the hikers are leaving and our time has finally come, so we walk down US 44 back to the trail. It¢s a thousand foot climb - haven't had one of these in a while. I was huffing and puffing but I made it. Man that felt great ¢ NOT! I'm soaking wet and Cash is already here at the top. The view was unreal and there was a breeze and I started getting cold. I was almost dry when I heard Big Red and some others coming up, so we stayed a while and then we left for Massachusetts. But first, Bear Mountain was in front of us - a six hundred foot climb and then seven hundred feet down in less than eight tenths of a mile, in the dark. It was a lot of butt sliding, but hey, it's cooler. So at 9:50 pm, Cash and I crossed the border into Massachusetts. We now only have four states to go and 682 miles!We decided to tent at the Sages Ravine camping area and tomorrow we go up and over Mt. Everett then it looks like all downhill to Great Barrington, MA.