Date: 2007-07-13
From: Pine Swamp Brook Lean-to

To: Salisbury, CT
Miles today: 15.6
Weather: clear sky

Five A.M. comes too early, but that is the time that I need to get up in order to take advantage of the cool weather and avoid afternoon thunderstorms. It's been surprisingly easy to wake up so early when you can see the ambient light of the sun before sunrise from the inside of a tent or shelter. It turned out to be a cool morning. The temperature allowed me to see my breath. The chill in the air encouraged me to pack up my tent, load my pack, and get going in a hurry.I had a mail drop to pick up today in Salisbury, Connecticut, and decided to make it my destination for tonight.   The package was a replacement water filter cartridge that I had overnighted via UPS since the outfitter in Kent and the one in Cornwallis were out of stock. I had backwashed my old filter several times and it was now barely useable.For the most part, today's hike was not as difficult as the hike from Kent to the Pine Brook Swamp Lean-to. I am not sure if it was because the mileage was less or because the terrain was not as difficult or something else. Maybe that something else was a hot shower, as I'll explain in a moment.For the second time in as many days, I found myself walking down the trail only to lose sight of the white blazes marking the trail. It looks like the trail maintainers in this part of Connecticut need to go back and re-paint the faded blazes, taking care to properly double-blaze the locations where the trail turns and changes directions. Today, a blaze sent me right through a farmer's corn field. Minutes earlier, I just finished walking around the perimeter of a corn field and thought that I'd be doing the same on the other side of the paved road based upon the indication of the painted blazes. After trampling through the corn and tall grass, I retraced my steps only to think that maybe I was going in the right direction. The trail must be badly overgrown, I thought. Once again, I second guessed that idea and retraced my steps. I finally discovered the next faded blaze on the back side of a guard rail down on the paved road. I'm very unhappy with the maintenance of the trail in Connecticut.A lot of the trail in this segment passes underneath tall, large-diameter pine trees.   It was pleasant to inhale the scent of these pine trees as I hiked along. You'll also get another long, flat stretch of trail that wanders beside the Housatonic River.The highlight of the day was hiking past the "Great Falls" on the Housatonic River and, to a lesser extent, the sight of several families and flocks of wild turkeys. The turkeys move off the trail so quickly that it is difficult to take a picture of them. In the middle of the afternoon, I made it to Salisbury to pick up my package at the post office and to The White Hart Inn and Restaurant. I didn't know about this place except that it was a small hotel that I made a reservation for. Wow. Neat! There's a history behind this inn that you can read about online http://www.whitehartinn.com . It is listed on The National Register of Historic Places. When I approached the building, I thought that this is not a place that would want to rent a room to a grubby hiker, but they gladly took my credit card. It is certainly not The Four Seasons, but it is a classy place.By the time I showered and put on my "cleanest" hiker clothes, I headed down to their tap room for a late lunch. Unfortunately, I just missed the 3 PM cut-off time for the kitchen, but sat at the bar talking with the four people who were there as well as the bartender. I had a fantastic conversation with a woman named Sherry who told me that she worked for IBM in the early 1980s. I recently left my job at IBM to go hiking. I had two hours to kill until the kitchen would be open for dinner (and I was starving!), so the conversation with those of us there ranged from hiking to the stock market, politics, and, you name it. I was impressed with the atmosphere and friendliness of this small bar in the hotel. It seemed to cater to locals and was probably Salisbury's equivalent of "Cheers." The bar tender, Tammy, knew all their names. I sat and listened for a while to the conversations going on around me. They were about concerts, summer plans, trips, local events, and so forth. It actually made me wonder about my hiking trip. After all, the things they were talking about sounded more exciting than wandering through the woods for the next couple of months, like I plan on doing. It is now early evening and I've been working on this journal from a rocking chair on the wrap-around porch of this Inn. I'm wiped out, dog-tired and still need to catch up on the journal entries from two days ago, then get my things together for tomorrow. Yet, there's so much more that I could enter here. I'll let it go and keep it as a memory since keeping this journal is very time consuming.   I am looking forward to sleeping on a good mattress tonight. The rooms are decorated in much the same way that you might find in a bed and breakfast. Hopefully, I'll sleep well. I'll need the rest now that I know what the elevation profile looks like for tomorrow.