Date: 2015-08-01
From: North Adams, MA

To: Manchester Center
Miles today: 15.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Manchester Center Post Aug 1stWritten at Northbound milepost 1651;   538 miles to go to Katahdin, Maine.It has just been a few days since my North Adams Post Tuesday July 28, but No Worries and I are spending the night here at Green Mountain House Hostel in Manchester Center, Vermont, and I have two good posts to post for you. But first these odds and ends...Brad/No Worries and I have reached our 3rd to last state.   Vermont AT is famous for the Green Mountains.   But they are all below treeline, so the hiking scenery is still much the same, namely a lot of trees.   I remain thankful for all the trees, as it keeps the temperature down for us.   It has recently gotten slightly cooler, and we expect it to continue to get cooler, for which we are thankful, until it gets downright cold. We have just reached the 3/4th completion mark.   But, this mark is not so significant as the 14 mark or the 12 way mark.   Now we are counting the miles remaining. 538 miles remaining still seems like a lot. August 1st IS a significant calendar milestone, however.   We have less than 2 months to go.   Do I sound like I am ready to be done? Yes, it¢s true, I am.   But I won¢t quit now.   Oddly, we spoke with one hiker yesterday that was so bored of the hike that he planned to quit today.   So things like that still happen.   I also got a text message from ¢Gunner¢, who told me his ankle was not responding to rehabilitation, so his AT hike this year was done. We are meeting many southbounders now, in Vermont.   They started about June 1st through June 15th, which would infer we have 1 12 months to go until we finish.   There are also hikers on this section of the AT that are doing the ¢Long Trail¢ in Vermont, that is, the Long trail and the AT are on the same path for 105 miles in southern Vermont.   So we see lots of hikers during the daytime.   And the shelters have many tent campers.   The Green Mountain House Hostel we are staying at was full, so they are putting us up in the barn or some such place, but it is a nice place afterall.   So there remains some competition for shelter and hostel space, during these few weeks.   We continue to see new hikers that started in Springer, Georgia. That is odd, since they would typically be hiking at the same speed as us, so you would think we would have seen all the thru-hikers at our speed by now, but that is not so. People take time off, so people come and go.   But Brad and I remain together. The south bounders seem, however, all very competent.   Unlike many of the northbound hikers that started with us in Georgia. South bound AT is considered more difficult than northbound AT. Southbounders have to do the very tough Kathadin, Maine, and the White Mountains in New Hampshire at the very start. Any people that made it through that already know what they are doing. I spent a very pleasant evening last Tuesday in Stamford, Vermont with Doug O¢Neill, David O¢Neill¢s uncle.   We ate at a restaurant in North Adams, then he gave me a tour of Williamstown, MA. This area seems fairly prosperous. Lots of art museums. Meanwhile Brad did a likely final visit with his wife in Bennington, Vermont. Vermont trails are known for mud.   They tell us to walk straight through the mud, but I, and almost everybody else, refuses, and the result is we all make the path wider.   And It will continue to widen until they add more boardwalk/planks.   You can tell people to walk through the mud, but you can¢t force them. OK, that¢s it for random thoughts.   Now for two fun posts, ¢Wrong Way Madison¢, and Wilderness, sure, but common sense, please.¢