Date: 2008-06-12
From: Wilbur Clearing Lean-to MA

To: Seth Warner Shelter VT
Miles today: 9.9
Weather: clear sky

Day 116 ¢ Thursday June 12 ¢ Seth Warner Shelter VT ¢ Miles Today: 9.9 Total Miles: 1586.6Boy did we have a delightful night sleep with comfortable temperatures and a breeze! We had the rain fly on but both doors open allowing the nice air coming down the hill behind us to come through one door and right out the other. We took a nap from 6:30 to 8:30, woke up, said hello to each other and immediately rolled over and went back to sleep and slept until 6:30 this morning. Twelve hours of sleep! I think I would have to say that our bodies were a bit tired. Probably a combination of the heat and the storms not allowing us to sleep well lately as well as hiking in the hot temps have worn us out a bit. Grasshopper, unfortunately, right before she woke up was dreaming that she was sleeping in the real cozy comfortable four poster bed on Leslie Road - she was just enjoying how comfortable it was, then rolled over and said "Drats, I'm camping." Just when you think you had all the creature comforts of home, you roll over and realize you're on the hard tent platform and life is back to reality. During the night, Brakeman heard an animal chewing on the privy and he believes it was a porcupine. We investigated the privy in the morning and there was definitely fresh chew marks. Not sure why any animal would want to chew on a privy, but whatever. We finally hit the trail about 7:30 as we had a short day - only 10 miles. It was a very cool delightful morning, about 55 degrees, something we've not had in a long time.   We walked 3-miles to the road that lead us to a grocery store in Williamstown, which was just 3/10th mile off the trail. Shortly before the grocery store we saw some hikers get out of a car. One of the hikers was Spruce! Grasshopper said to him, ¢You¢re hiking as slow as us old folks, what's going on?¢ Turns out he took a day off in Dalton to visit a swimming hole and then was slack-packed by Tom Levardi, the infamous Dalton Trail Angel, for a day. It was nice seeing him again, but of course, he is doing more miles than us and we won't see him again unless he pulls some more of those shenanigans. We tried a new tactic in the grocery store. Since Brakeman is like a little kid in a candy store, just totally unable to make a decision with so many options, Grasshopper did the grocery shopping while Brakeman roamed up and down each aisle trying to decide what he wanted to eat. Boy did he find some treats. He found chocolate milk and half a dozen day-old chocolate covered, cream filled, glazed donuts for $1.77! He was a happy, happy, happy camper! Grasshopper selected yogurt, sugar wafers and then also ate1.5 of Brakeman¢s donuts and drank some chocolate milk.While we were sitting outside the grocery store repackaging our food and eating our treats, we met Dynamite, a young gentleman thru-hiker from New Hampshire. It sounds like he is aiming for Katahdin near the end of July, so maybe there's a chance that we will see him again up North. Soon after we hit the trail, we determined that we had finally identified a way to neutralize the difference in our hiking speeds. What we do is feed Brakeman 4.5 donuts, a bunch of chocolate milk, put 4 days of food in his pack and TA-DA!! The hiking speed is now equal between us. Grasshopper says we are going to do this at every grocery shopping stop! Brakeman responded to that idea by sticking his tongue out at his hiking partner and stated that he is NEVER doing that much sugar again! We shall see. In four days we'll be hitting a grocery store in Manchester Center and we'll see how he does. We crossed over into Vermont today! In the register at the Massachusetts-Vermont border, somebody had mentioned that they saw Chris in the outfitter in Williamstown and that he's fallen in love with a mountain goat! Turns out that the ¢mountain goat¢ is really an employee at the outfitter called Mountain Goat. Next time we see him, we'll have tease him a bit about that!We arrived at the shelter around 3:15 and we switched camp chore responsibilities. Brakeman set up the tent while Grasshopper filtered water and washed her shorts, which for some strange reason were subjected to a urinary incontinence attack as soon as we hit the junction to the shelter. What¢s up with that? Ah, nothing like fresh clean shorts, especially after that type of hit! They dried within an hour with the cool dry breeze.   Next laundry stop - a couple weeks away in Hanover, or so we hope. We found a note from Chris in the shelter register - he's back on the trail! He said that his time off the trail was not exactly relaxing which we could imagine given that he probably had to drive to and from Ohio, where he was taking a test for an Ohio Game Warden position. But he's back on the trail and hoping to make ¢big miles¢. He¢s now 2 days ahead of us, soon to be more.It's 6:00 and 70 degrees. We actually have on our #1 tops and bottoms and are lounging in the tent away from the bugs. The bugs were not as horrible today.   This is the first day we did not use any DEET. That's not to say the bugs weren't biting ¢ it¢s just to say that our flailing arms could keep up with them for a change. Hopefully we'll have more pleasant cool days like this that are mostly bug-free.Good night from Vermont! Eleven states down and 3 to go! Wow!