Date: 2018-08-01
From: Winturri Shelter

To: Tent site at Podunk Brook
Miles today: 18.7

DAY 148It didn't rain as much as we thought last night, so when we got up this morning the tent was only damp. We are a little light on food, so we had hoped to go into the On Edge Farm market, but we were too early and it was still closed. It¢s supposed to rain today and I don't think we can make it all the way to Hanover, so hopefully there is a spot in West Hartford where you can stay in a woman's barn. At this point the trail is going mostly east, but there are lots a little mountains in the way.  You just plow straight up over them and right straight back down again. We knew we could get some extra supplies from Cloudland Farm, but as we approached one of the road crossings we saw a sign that was from two former thru-hikers from 2016. Apparently they bought a house just down the street from the road crossing and we're welcoming thru-hikers to their back porch for some snacks and drinks, so we decided we would walk down and take a peek.Oh my God, when we made our way around back to the porch there was a refrigerator with some cold drinks, homemade whoopie pies and brownies, and some other goodies including hard boiled eggs. We decided to enjoy a couple whoopie pies, and pack out a couple hard boiled eggs for breakfast in the morning.We were sitting on the porch enjoying the whoopie pies when Loon, one of the hikers came out to chat with us while he was working on his porch. After we chatted a while about the projects he and his wife have going on with their old cape and we finished our whoopie pies we decided we better move on. Loon told us the next climb we had coming up  wasn't as bad as it looked on the profile map, but I think he was trying to be easy on us because it was a killer. When we made it up over the hill and back down the other side we came to another road crossing where we could hike up to the Cloudland Farm. Cloudland Farm is an organic beef farm, but they also have a restaurant they operate 4 days a week as well as a little farm stand. We went into the farm stand where they had a couple of pulled pork sandwiches in the refrigerator. We each got a sandwich and a cold organic soda. The restaurant is a beautiful post and beam barn looking building that sits up in a beautiful field overlooking the mountains. We sat on the surrounding porch and enjoyed our meal just as rain began to fall. We put on our rain gear and headed out. Even though it was a little cooler today it didn't take long before we were sweating heavily heading uphill in our rain gear. It rained pretty hard, but we were determined to make it down into West Hartford where we hoped to have a dry place in the barn.When we finally made it to West Hartford, the dry oasis we were hoping for turned out to be less than satisfactory. The barn turned out to be quite cluttered,  and not what I would call the cleanest of living quarters, I'm sure the owner has a big heart and is trying to help out hikers, but we decided it was not a place we wanted to stay.We were both pretty tired after hiking a big day in the rain, but there really wasn't anything we do we could do but hike on. After checking the map we could see there was a campsite about a mile and a half ahead next to a stream, so that's what we headed for. Made it there quickly, set up, had something to eat and both crashed in the tent hoping the rain wouldn't last too long.