Date: 2008-08-15
From: Manchester

To: Griffith Lake Tenting Area
Miles today: 10.6
Weather: overcast clouds

OK, we've pampered ourselves enough in Manchester, so now it's back to the trail. Our destination today was the Griffith Lake Tenting Area. To begin our day, we woke up early, showered and then walked over to Up For Breakfast. On the way, we ran into Bulldog sitting on a bench near the road. He joined us for breakfast and told us he was going to spend at least another day in Manchester and get some orthotics and maybe some new boots. His knee was feeling a bit better, but he still wasn't too confident about it. After nice breakfast, we said goodbye to Bulldog and told him we'd leave some encouraging notes for him in the trail journals ahead. I hope we run into him again before we get to Hanover. He's such an interesting character. Our shuttle arrived at Sutton's Place at 8:30 and we were at the trailhead 20 minutes later. The sky was overcast but I didn't know if there was rain in the forecast or not. The hike from the road up to Bromley is not bad at all, and near the end you walk for about 1/2 mile on a nice ski trail to the summit. Moving off the summit and back into the woods, it started to spit rain again, but it never really got too bad. The trail conditions going through this section were still quite muddy...kind of a deep, dark, murky section of the trail, which I'm sure the cloudy, threatening sky didn't help to brighten up. By the time we got to Styles Peak, the sun was trying to come out. It didn't last long though. We stopped for lunch on the side of the trail between Styles Peak and Peru Peak and just as we were finishing lunch, it started to rain again so we packed up quickly and continued on. It would rain for a bit, stop, and then rain for a bit again before it finally stopped for the rest of our walk down off of Peru Peak to the tenting area. We arrived at Griffith Lake Tenting Area at about 2:00 PM and set up our tent on one of the several tent platforms that they have in the area. Shortly after we got the tent set up, it started to rain again so we hunkered down inside the tent and read our books for awhile. In about 1/2 hour, the rain stopped and the sun came out. All of a sudden it started to clear up really nice. Maybe this is the end of the long, wet spell that we've had. We walked over to the shore of Griffith Lake and met two girls from Middlebury College who were hiking the Long Trail before they go back to school for their senior year. The father of one of them was also with them for a few days. At about 4:30, we collected our cooking gear, food, and water bottles and headed over to the shelter, where we cooked a yummy dinner of spaghetti. In preparation for our backpacking trips, we like to dehydrate as much food as we can. It rehydrates easily and saves us some fuel because the cooking time doesn't need to be nearly as long as it normally would without dehydrating. Also, we eat a lot better on the trail, which makes for a happy hiker. After dinner, we filled up our water bottles and returned to our tent, where we settled in for the night and read our books until it was dark. I'm loving it out here on the trail and I look forward to every new day. What will tomorrow bring? Who knows, but I can't wait to find out.