Date: 2016-05-22
From: Story Spring Shelter

To: Bromley Shelter 
Miles today: 23.0
Weather: light rain

Before I talk about today's journey, I want to give a quick mention of something that happened yesterday. Yesterday we met a young man, his name is Vince and this was his first day on the trail. He's doing a section hike from Vermont to Maine and he was so excited. Excitement just kind of hung around him like halo. Everything he saw was just wonderful and amazing. He was wearing a really cool green shirt and several times during the day, we would pass him he would pass us, this is called leap frog in hiker speak . So it came to me what his trail name should be. Kermit! I rarely name anyone on the trail. I maybe have suggested names for one or two other people. Our good friend Elevator is one of them. You can only suggest a trail name, you don't give it to someone, they decide whether they will take it. The next time we passed Kermit I told him what I thought his trail name should be and why, and he said he loved it. So Kermit he is. And now I feel like a trail name fairy godmother. Lol. Today would be a very social day as hiking days go for Will and I. The first person we bumped into was the caretaker for the fire tower at the Stratton Lookout. We had climbed up to the fire tower this morning and we're going over the back side. Apparently he's been the caretaker since 1963, that's an amazingly long time.The next people we bumped into were three guys doing some trail maintenance. We thanked them for all the hard work that they did on the trail and then chatted about the trail and also about our journey so far.We walked along encountering a few weekend hikers as we went. We stopped at a shelter to take second break. There were several people inside, trying to decide whether they wanted to go out and hike in the rain or not. Among them were three people. It appeared to be two brothers and one of the brother's wife. One of them appeared to have some knowledge of backpacking. The other one was definitely a newbie. This was his first longer hike. They plan to be out for about 10 days but he had stuffed everything but the kitchen sink into his pack. It weighed over 55 pounds. And he was not having very much fun at all. We took a few minutes to try to encourage him. We told him about a few things you could do to lighten his pack and a book he might read. I rarely do that kind of thing but he seemed extremely miserable. As we left it seem like he was a little bit brighter about the prospects of hiking.From there we hiked hard until we got to the turn off point for ManChester Center. Our plan was to try to go into town pick up some food for resupply go somewhere to eat and then if possible get back out and Hike the trail a couple more miles. It was raining, it was nasty and we weren't sure people would want to stop and pick us up.But we only stood by the road for maybe 3 or 4 minutes and a nice young man picked this up. He said we were the third group of people he had taken into town in the last week or two. Very cool. We went to the Outfitters got what we needed there, went to the grocery store got what we needed there, then went to McDonald's and ate a bunch of food.We decided to try and make it out of town. What we have found as we have been hitchhiking these many years is that as it gets darker or later people don't want to stop and give you a ride. Who could blame them? But again we were very fortunate. After about 5 minutes a couple in a van pulled over and told us to hop in. They themselves had hiked a good portion of the AT,They dropped us off at the traihead with plenty of time to hike a couple of miles. So we hiked up to the Bromley shelter and set our tent up on the wooden platforms they have there. At least it's level.All in all we feel it was a very good day in terms of getting things done. It can be very difficult to get in and out of a resupply town on the same day. Depending on how quickly you're hitching goes.So we are on a little wooden platform in a little tent and all settled in for a good night's sleep. Catch you later!Road Runner