Date: 2004-07-28
From: Thistle Hill Shelter

To: Velvet Rocks Shelter
Miles today: 16.1
Weather: overcast clouds

Finally, we're back to my photos. Thanks for your patients.This was an exciting day. Anticipation can be a very driving force. Today the trail would deliver me back home to New Hampshire. First though, there was some hiking to be done. The trail was not difficult today. After about 5 miles, it came out onto a road and passed through the town of West Hartford, Vermont. Now West Hartford is a very small place. It took only about 5 minutes to walk through town but that would have been too quick. After all, who could pass up Rick & Tina's Country Store. This was a great place. It was small and packed with all kinds of goodies. There was also a counter with stools where a hungry hiker could order some good lunch. Yeah, this was a good place. Some other hikers showed up but by then for me it was time to go.The trail continued down the road, turned right and crossed under some railroad tracks. Coming down the hill on the other side of the tracks there was a southbound family. It was mom, dad and at least 3 school age kids. They were happy and happier to here me say the town was just around the corner.Sometime in the next day or 2 someone on the trail would ask if I had met the Canary family on the trail. Well of course I had but that was back at Elk Garden on my birthday back on May 29th. Wait a minute, that's who that family was in West Hartford, VT. They did look familiar. Blast, if only I had realized that would have been a fun reunion. They had flip flopped of course. That was so cool that they had stuck with it. This was a morning of sprinkles and showers and so was that day, 2 months ago back in May.At about 3:30pm the trail passed down the streets and through the town of Norwich, Vermont. Here it crossed US-5 and Interstate 91. A few minutes before 4pm, it was time to cross the Connecticut River into New Hampshire. This was a pretty nice and fancy bridge.In the middle there was an engraved block of granite indicating VT on one half and NH on the other half. The funny thing is that it is actually in the wrong place. Somehow when the lines were drawn way back in the day, the NH folks insisted that the entire river was in New Hampshire. The state boarder is actually on the Vermont shore of the river not in it's middle as is the case for most state borders on rivers.The road from the bridge led the trail up to the center of Hanover and the campus of Dartmouth College. At a main intersection there was a blue blaze trail that leads a few hundred feet to the headquarters of the Dartmouth Outing Club in Robinson Hall, a classic ivy league building.Downstairs there was a lounge, a bulletin board and a hiker box. There were computers on the web and there were bath rooms. DOC students were putting together a mailing. It was a comfortable place. There was even a phone upstairs in the lobby. After reading email, sending AT Update 10 and some phone calls, it was time for some groceries.The Hanover Consumer Co-op was at the other end of town, past the high school where I had been to NHETG Drama Festivals, just before the trail heads off road. It was going to close so that was my next destination. This was not the typical supermarket. It took a little doing but my needs were filled, the store closed and I headed out into the dark.The next shelter was less than a mile up the trail but it was time for dinner. Heading back passed the high school into town there was a pizza shop with a Ben & Jerry's next door. This was perfect. The table in the pizza place was a great place for repacking food while waiting for my spinach calzone. Mmmmm. After that it was time for desert, ice cream. It was kind of late now for a thru-hiker and there was a line out the door at Ben & Jerry's. How could this be. Hmm. Stay or go. It's ice cream. Gotta stay.So there I was in my nylon shorts and poly-pro t-shirt, boots, gators and pack, waiting on the side walk a few steps form the door to Ben & Jerry's. Most of the folks on the line were young women. They might have been college freshmen. It was hard to say what they were doing here in the end of July. There must have been some special event. The 4 people just ahead of me in line were different. They were mid to late twenties. They were 2 men and 2 women. I struck up a conversation asking what they were in town for. It seemed they were here at a conference of some sort. They hailed from the mid-west somewhere. They asked what I was doing with the pack. I told them. At least one knew of the trail. After explaining that it went from Georgia to Maine, someone asked where the Appalachian Trail was around here. When I said it was across the street it was hard not to laugh out loud. They were visibly stunned. I pointed out the blaze on the telephone pole over there. That just stunned them even more. We had fun standing on line and chatting.This Ben & Jerry's had a thru-hiker special. That was nice. The scoopologists were working hard. The place was crowded but there was an empty booth that gave me the chance to sit and eat my Cherry Garcia cone while observing this other side of life. It was already dark out so there was no real reason to hurry. It wasn't going to get any darker while I ate my ice cream.The blazes led me back down past the high school and the co-op at around 9:30pm. Now the trick was to find where the trail left civilization in the dark. There was the double blaze but did it turn up the residential driveway or up along the soccer field on this side of the hedge. In the light it might have been possible to see the next blaze but not now. For some reason the soccer field won out and fortunately it was the right choice. At the corner of the field the trail ducked into the woods. In fact there was a little tent there. That seemed like a bad place to camp to me. The trail started to climb and then got steeper. The footing was a little tricky by the light of my Tikka headlamp. There was the typical second guessing that came with looking for a side trail to a shelter in the dark. It can't be this far. Maybe it was back there. No, just keep going. Then, sure enough, there it was and it was only 10:05pm.Being this close to town, there was a high probability that the shelter would be full. Fortunately, as my headlamp slowly lifted to light it's interior, it became apparent, that was not the case. In fact the shelter was empty. That was exciting. Velvet Rocks was a small old log shelter. The floor had a compound slope to it. It wasn't just sloped front to back but right to left too. It was hard to figure just where to put my head to assure it was above my feet and yet not have the feeling of rolling to the side. Wow, this was New Hampshire. Even though this was a big town day it had still been 16.1 miles.