Date: 2012-08-08
From: Bennington, VT

To: Stratton-Arlington Rd
Miles today: 22.6

Woke up in the morning. I tried to convince a few people that we should drive back into town to grab McDonald¢s for breakfast. For some crazy reason, no one else was as town food obsessed as I was, and wanted to get a reasonable start on the day. So I had Pop Tarts. Sad, pathetic Pop Tarts. Those things don¢t have much staying power, even 4 of them.The trail was easy by and large. A lot of mud and rocks and roots. At one place, there was a healthy spring coming out of the ground in the middle of the trail and flowing down the trail. I slid a fair bit trying to walk down that slip ¢n slide and almost ended up with a muddy butt. Who builds a trail through a spring? The summits were all viewless as the trees were so leafy and very green. Green Mountains indeed.For lunch I found a stealth camp spot next to the trail and decided to stop there. I was there for about 15 minutes when an older gentleman came hobbling by, and decided to join me. I say hobbling because in one hand was a massive piece of wood for a hiking stick, and in the other hand was a 5-gallon bucket, causing him to walk rather hunched over. His name was Animal, and I was shocked to find out that he was a thru-hiker. He had carried that blasted bucket all the way from Georgia. He looked terrible, like he was dying. I asked him some, and he couldn¢t figure out why nobody else saw the genius of a 5-gallon bucket on the trail. He rattled off a ton of uses: a seat, food canister to deter mice and bears, dry ¢sack¢, it was gentler on the skin than a blow-down when going number 2, he ¢only¢ has to resupply every 2-4 weeks since it holds so much food, etc. I halfheartedly tried to persuade him of the ridiculousness of carrying that much weight in your hand up and down mountains for 2200 miles, but he was undeterred. And, I guess, he made it this far. I found out later that he was also suffering from Lymes disease at the time, which explains him looking like death. Still wouldn¢t ever recommend a 5-gallon bucket full of food for a thru-hike, or any hike for that matter.There was one view today, on top of the Glastenberry Mountain there is this fire tower. It was nice to see scenery. However, the top of this mountain had a rather eerie feel to it. Apparently, an unusually high number of people have disappeared either on or near this mountain. The whole area around the fire tower was coated in an almost literal blanket of very large black flies, the size of which I had never seen on the trail before. Lastly, several of the other trails leading away from the tower were clearly labeled with Do Not Enter signs. (In retrospect, these are likely one way snowmobile trails.) The next time I had WiFi, I actually Googled and did find multiple news stories about disappearances in the area, spread out over a decade or so. Not sure what those giant flies could be eating to grow so large.That evening, I made camp with Rampage & Mango, et al. alongside a large stream along the road. I learned that Wheezie¢s dog, Aisha, is obsessed with fetch. That dog knows no limits when it comes to fetching the stick, even when we threw it in the stream. That dog would run its paws until they were bleeding playing fetch and still go all out to get that stick. I don't know if I've ever seen a dog so tireless.