Date: 2018-07-22
From: Story Spring Shelter

To: Tent Site Near William Douglas Shelter
Miles today: 15.3

It was raining when we woke, so we decided to roll over for a few more moments. Once it seemed like it was just dripping off the trees we got up and headed down to the shelter for breakfast.As we were "enjoying" breakfast in the shelter with Sourpatch and Knotty Boy, in came Ed & Elaine. They had gone into Bennington and had been at Kid Gore Shelter last night, and joined us in the shelter to make their breakfast. Our reservations for the hostel are for tomorrow night, and we are going to be close on food. We have earmarked all of our food so we know what we can have for snacks and meals so we hopefully won't run out. We made our way up Stratton Mountain knowing we wouldn't have a view. There is a caretaker cabin on Stratton, and also a side trail to the Gondola that you can take down to restaurants if it is running. Once at the top, we stood outside the caretaker cabin wondering if we should knock. We weren't even sure it was the caretaker cabin as it was so small. In the guides it says to stop in and say hi to the caretakers, and we had actually been hoping it would be a bigger cabin that we could get in to get out of the rain and enjoy lunch. Soon the door opened slightly and Jean peeked out and asked how we were doing and if we needed anything. We said we were fine, and that we were going to try to find a try spot to have our lunch. We were wondering about the gondola, which Jean said she didn't think was running today due to the weather. After a few moments she asked if we'd like to come in and have our lunch in the cabin. We gladly accepted her offer.The cabin is quite small, but she offered us a place to sit and also offered us some hot tea. It was wonderful to be out of the weather for lunch and to actually have some hot tea to go with our peanut butter and fluff sandwiches as we had gotten quite chilled. We chatted with Jean and her husband Hugh for close to an hour. They have been caretakers here off and on for 50 years, with Hugh actually starting out as a "fire spotter" in the fire tower. They spend six months out of the year at the cabin with two days off a week and live nearby. Now that the fire tower is closed, they are educators and historians and keep track of visitors and the number of hikers passing by. We wished we could stay longer, but figured we better get going so we can make it to Manchester Center for our reservations tomorrow. We told them we would come back for a visit and bring them something and asked what they would like. Hugh's immediate response was chocolate.As we continued down the trail from the summit along came Sourpatch and Knotty Boy. We thought they were ahead of us as they left the Shelter before us. They said they had gone up the fire tower and when they came down had mistakenly gotten on the blue blazed trail which led to the gondola. When they saw the gondola they decided they may as well head down to the restaurants for lunch. They said lunch was good, but expensive. $20 got a sandwich, donut and a cup of coffee. We would have liked to enjoy a gondola ride and lunch at a restaurant, but in the long run we figure our visit with Hugh and Jean will be more memorable.We made it down to the side trail to the shelter, but since the shelter was .5 off trail we decided to find a site nearby. Just across the stream from the shelter we found a nice spot to set up. This will leave us just under six miles tomorrow to get to the road where we can hitch to Manchester Center. Dr. Ice, Evergreen and family arrived and were searching near the trail for a site so I walked down to let them know there were some better sites near where we were set up. We had cleaned up in the stream earlier, and had a quick dinner and got in our tent for the evening.